How about something in between the subtle and the extreme. I used magic lasso on leaves and simply tried to enhance saturation and brightness using Photoshop elments. It is very difficult to see differences when the images are not side by side. One thing is certain, an image like this makes you think, becaues noone wants to dismiss the beautiful play of light and waves.
Thanks for all the feedback, it's been very useful. (I'm not ignoring you, Jason, just responding to this particular post.)
I agree that this helps enhancing the leaves, but the crop is now pushing the limits of what's usable for a print; the cropped area represents approximately 2060x1520 pixels of the original 3504x2336. For the sake of illustration, here's the complete capture (reduced to 1/3 detail):
[attachment=13001:4270_Lea...ter_orig.jpg]
Ordinarily, I'd avoid having the subject near the center of the frame, but I didn't in this case, it appears that I was trying to avoid something else, perhaps some unfortunate reflections or other disturbing elements (like the subsurface rocks in the lower right).
That said, I made a 19.5 cm x 29.5 cm print of one of the near-BW versions above, which subsequently got the typically nasty ink marks that Ilford Gold Fibre Silk gets in an Epson R1800, which forced me to reconsider the 19x29 matte I'd assumed I'd be using and instead go for a 20x25 frame (with 19x24 visible). That works quite well on the wall, and here's what it looks like:
[attachment=13002:IMG_9179.jpg]
(The colours are off slightly because of the competing light colours of the light, flash light and wall colours.)