Grafton Fall tree

Looks great - falling leaves make this shot for me. The background blur however does appear un-natural - but you mentioned it anyway.

Thanks for your comment. No question that the background blur is over the top but really wanted to eliminate a distracting background. Thinking about this now, I should have posted this in the photo art forum. Suggestions on how to make this background blur less unnatural would be appreciated.

Welcome to NPN Eric. I like this very much, especially the leaves that are falling. Tell us a little about yourself...where you are from etc.

Thanks for your comment Alice, and thank you very much for the welcome. I can see already that this is a nice community here. I skipped over these fields in my original registration thinking that no one would be interested. I have now filled in my Photographer profile on PhotoPortfolios so please feel free to review. Again, thank you.

Oh man, this has a very cool "feel" to it. To steal a phrase from Mark Hudon, "I'm all over it!"
I like the blur. I'm curious, did you clone in the falling leaves, or were they actually falling when you tripped the shutter?

Sweet image!

Thank you very much Curtis for your comment.
The leaves falling were indeed added after the fact. I found a leaf clone brush in the Photoshop Elements palette and did this as an experiment, and I think that this really made the photo special. I used that clone brush to fill in some less dense spaces within the original tree.
Now in fall, I keep looking for trees shedding their leaves.
I'm posting the original so you can see just how much editing I did. Almost embarrassing given how crappy the original shot was, but also a reminder of how powerful photoshop is at creating works of "art."

Well done Eric. I like it.

Congrats on the EP.

Thanks Michael, and thank you very much Editors!