I didn't mean to sound so blunt. Using this as a background layer for anything else from other flowers, to frogs or your cousin, would give the photo a purpose. Early on it was drummed into me that every photo must have a purpose (tell a story) and have something that your eye will focus and come to rest on as it cruises through the picture. Having said that, I have seen lots of "art" prints that violate that rule. I have several folders of shots that I took specifically for backgrounds. I collect sky and cloud shots mostly, as here in Arizona we are cursed with clear skies most of the year.

Here you go:
First of all, let me stress that this is just one of thousands of possible interpretations of this photo. This is just one treatment I happen to enjoy.
I am using Photoshop Elements 11.
First, I cropped it slightly to eliminate some of the background which I knew would not convert well with the effects I wanted to use.
I Then hit the brightness/contrast auto correct box which brightened it a little.
Then I used the "add saturated slide film effect" to bring out the muted colors a bit more.
Next, I went up the filters drop down menu and chose "comic." There are many sliders available here so you can adjust the number of colors, the width of edge lines, the smoothness, and so on and so forth. You can experiment with those until you like the way your image looks in the preview box. Then click "done."
As a final step, I applied a 50% black vignette. This covered up the remaining bit of background and added an appearance of depth and dimension.

I repeat, there are a lot of things you could do to enhance this kind of image. Get in there and start learning your programs, you will love it. There are plenty of YouTube training videos online. Learn one or two features at a time and pretty soon you'll be making all your images look their best.

In your eyes, in your mind and in your heart, these are the most precious practice subjects in the world. If that is a snapshot, so be it. You will keep trying and slowly your snapshorts will become works of art. What are the three most important an artist possesses. Read my first sentence again. I have no more skills or advice I can impart to you, except to remind tou that your best tools are your eyes, mind and heart. And you are lucky to be able to practice while doing the most important job you will ever have. Keep trying and good luck!

I think that's pretty darn good. Others have mentioned that showing more of the trike would be good. I would recommend pulling back until you can show the whole trike. I think a panning shot with churning wheels is terrific looking. The slower you dare take the shutter the faster the thing looks. I notice you popped a flash on him. That will tend to give you a single sharp image overlying the softer ones underneath. I'd recommend trying to learn the trick without flash, which requires quite a number of bad pix to get a single good one.

If I'm telling you something you already know I apologize, but the single most important trick in panning is follow through, just like golf. Your focus point needs to be where your subject will be when you fire your shutter, but you need to track and follow through. If you stop panning the camera at the instant you fire you'll get a smear every time. Say your son is coming from your left as in the example. You already have your framing roughed in to get him and the whole trike, plus a little for cropping. You may be on your knees (ow) but you pivot from the waist to pick him up in your finder as he pedals furiously to cross in front of you. You keep tracking him until he's just a fraction ahead of where you expect to get the picture, at which point you squeeze it off and the image blacks out. Here's where you have to just keep smoothly pivoting from the waist to your right as if you were panning a movie camera! That's the trick. If when your finder image returns you discover that you are still tracking him, that's success! The camera fires at, say, 1/30 of a second, and it's still tracking—smoothly we hope—as your subject rockets past, so you get parts of him sharp, and others smeared, which is what gives the illusion. The spokes of the wheels are smeared. Feet and churning legs are smeared. There may even be some after-image smeared across the hedge. But ideally his face and eyes are relatively sharp, and you've got it! It takes, oh, 10 or 20 tries at first to get the technique down, and he'll tire and quit (or you'll tire and quit) but the results can be just marvelous. :thumbup:

No worries, just remember it's such a subjective topic, and I am no expert :) The background of this mushroom does not compete for attention IMHO. It is a pleasing color, mostly smooth texture (barely bokeh), and seems appropriate to the setting.

I think bokeh consisting of bright spots draws your eye away from the subject. I find myself wanting to know what the source of those bright spots are rather than spending more time with the flower. Also it just occurred to me that your flower is cropped quite close. Maybe if it took up less space in the frame?