Missing Its Cap

Here's another acorn tritone. The cap of this acorn had come off, so I used both the acorn and cap to create this composition. Any C&C are welcome!

Olympus SP-550 UZ
f5.6 @ 1/30, ISO 200, -0.3 EV
Aperture priority mode, pattern metering
Processed in PS CS2; several curves adjustments, channel mixer, some burning on the BG, converted to tritone, shadow/highlight, some cloning on the ground and BG, cropped, and added a vignette

Christopher, I like this! I like the color tones and the thoughtful composition. I might remove the (barely there) clone marks to the left of the acorn. Nice DOF and I like the slight vignette.

Hi Christopher, Nice sepia effect with good foreground sharpness and taken at a low angle. The acorn is the center of interest but I find my eye constantly going to the cap and wondering if it's too dominant. Good effort!

Thanks Denise and Dave, I appreciate the input.

Dave, I redid the image using a reverse-S curve to lower the contrast of the cap so that it's a little less dominant. What do you think? I also corrected the clone marks pointed out by Denise.

Hi Christopher, By your muting the cap helps to keep my attention on the acorn. I think that did the trick!

Thanks Dave!

Hey Christopher,
Re-post rocks! Very nice concept and well executed!

Thanks Roman!