Red Maple Abstract

Today I stayed home to work on a project I've had in mind for several months.  I've been wanting to make a children's book of my nature photos, to give to my grand-niece for her 4th birthday.  It's a delightful summery day so I moved my computer and iced coffee out to the patio.  I made some progress, but spent the majority of the time learning how to move photos from my external hard drive into the book software.

When the sun was directly over the table it got a bit hot, so I adjusted my seat to remain under the shade of an ornamental maple tree.  I looked up and noticed the backlighting on the leaves.  Since it's abstract Thursday, I thought I would try to make some adjustments in LR to give it a less realistic look.  Of course there is no end to how much tweaking one can do when editing, so I decided to call it quits with this version.  I hope it qualifies for the challenge.  Regardless, it was fun to play around with it.