Herschel, it's a pleasure to join you. I've had so much fun looking at the images and reading your feedback and criticism, along with that of everyone else. I just took a stab at it to get in the game, but you gave me a lot of ideas.
I had made (or tried to make) the sculpture the subject. I liked your idea of making the "inviting-ness" of the garden the subject. I re-cropped (per your suggestion), undid some of the highlighting on the sculpture, lightened a spot on the path behind and to the right (inviting the eye back further), and lightened the benches to make them more inviting. Did same with the tree trunks to add texture and make them pop. I changed the pic mode to Landscape to make the whole more vivid. Blah, blah, blah...here it is:
Tell me what you think, now. There are still some distracting branches on the right. Getting rid of them would take some doing.
Will you help me make all my images look better?:biggrin: You guys are great! I love this thread. You have an amazing eye, Herschel, and I thank you for hosting and helping us sculpt more keenly.
Hey Neal, I like what you've done with this image - in the original, I felt as though the gates were trying to keep me out:frown:. Just one more suggestion to put a little icing on the cake: Use your eyedropper color measurement tool to probe the color balance of several "white" (or otherwise neutral) objects in the scene (flowers on the left, benches, etc.). You will see that there is a slight excess of blue on those areas -- that makes the scene feel just a tad "cool". You can correct that by applying a little bit of a "warming filter" [I like the Wratten 81A plus about 5% brightening , but your software may not specifically offer that filter so one of the CC (color correction) filters will work too.]