Autumn Leaves...

mnmcote · Nov 20, 2014

I shot these several weekends ago before the snow arrived...

Actinia · Nov 21, 2014

I always think that autumn leaves look best against a background of other such leaves, as in #1.

limr · Nov 21, 2014

For me, the second one is the best of the three.

In the first one, those bits of dead grass or straw across the big leaf on top are distracting and not pretty. The light is kind of dull, so it's tricky to make it more interesting than just a pile of leaves. And my eye keeps going to the line in the top right corner where you can see dirt, which isn't as pleasant to look at.

In the third, there needs to be something to make it more than just a picture of some dead leaves - an interesting pattern or some really nice sunbeam coming down on them or behind them. I think you were right to have a shallow depth of field to isolate the leaves on the trees from those on the ground, but it wasn't enough to blur out that branch cutting straight through the picture, which means it is also cutting through the subject. Maybe you could have opened the aperture a bit wider, or reframed to focus more on only one leaf (I would have chosen the one hanging down that is in front of the branch it's on) and made that a clearer subject.

The devil is in the details, man!

The second one has more interesting light, and the main leaf is clean, pretty, and partly sticking up, which contrasts with the others that are flatter or turned over. It's a more interesting subject and more pleasant to look at. The rest of the frame doesn't have distracting elements that take our attention away from that leaf. The background is textural but not distracting. All these make it a better picture than the other two.