Neat image, Eric. Surreal with great colors. Nice!

excellent pic

excellent photograph. congrats!

Excelente luz, perfecto color y composion, con un bello encuadre, un cordial saludo Eric.

This blurred background looks way too unnatural, becoming itself the main distraction. Try to blur it gradually instead in order to give a sense of distance. The colours are very eye-catching though. Cheers, Alex

Thank you all for your comments. I understand that the blur doesn't work for everyone. It was necessary to salvage this picture from what was a very uninteresting background scene, posted with my original posting of this shot at http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=3896866 I appreciate your interest and reactions.

All I can say is AMAZING!!!!!!!!!

The blur looks completely out of place considering the DOF of the foreground.

Excelent selective blur and nice colors.

Lovely Picture

Magnifcent colors. I love the leaves caught as they head for the ground. A truly great shot. Nice job.

Wonderful colors well done! Congrats Wade Rose

Very nice shot!

its the colours & light that captures. The blur might look a somewhat unnatural but it also give a soft feeling to balance the strong 'red' of the tree & ground. Nice picture overall.

I like the composition and colors of the tree. But because of the sudden change from sharp to blur the image doesn't appear to be real. I first thought that it was a miniature.

to achieve more realistic look. As it is, it's too un-natural. Having the bottom portion looking like it was taken with 600mm at f4 (shallow DOF) and the sky like 28 mm f11 (plenty of DOF).

Color range in PS might help you select the sky, but good luck making the transition from in focus to out of focus look natural.

That is why good bokeh is so hard to fake in photoshop.

I like the photo, but you really used too much blur. That's really a pity, now the photo looks unreal. Maybe you should try it again and take the critiques with you. I think your images certainly will become better. Good luck! :)

Lovely derrmy image.But it is not NATURE shot, it is photoart image because you have treeted havely in photo editing softwear

The background does look un-natural. I love the tree and the falling leaves though. The sunlight lighting the backside of the tree and the leaves on the ground is a nice touch.

Not a bad idea but the execution is far from optimal. To me it looked a bit like a bonsai tree. It might work better with less blur and (partly) feather the mask, so the transition from blurred to non-blurred is smooth. It may also help to blur a tiny bit of the foreground too (again, with a feathered mask), that would help suggest a limited DOF. Or....just be patient and try again this fall, with different camera settings.

Very nice. I would crop just the top left corner to remove the sky which takes the focus away and out of such an excellent picture.