Thanks all for looking at the leaf peeps. It can be, as you pointed out, "a pain in the angst." If you'd like to know more about the process, welcome to check out an article I did which I posted on my blog—Link here: http://brucewilley.typepad.com/bruce_willey/2008/11/arboreal-angst.html
But here's the short-short version...
"I’ve set up some hard and fast rules that I hope bring honor and character to the profession of leaf photography. No mendacious use of Photoshop with a leaf spilled into a better background. No manually throwing the leaves in the air or the employment of a ladder with a delightful rhinestone-clad assistant atop it. No strings or monofilament line attached. And no monkey business like a pet chimp shaking the leaves out of the tree despite the hand-in-hand satisfaction a walk in the woods with a fellow ape would give. None of these methods have I deemed acceptable. Only the leaf leaving its nine-month mooring to the tree by natural means is allowed or even considered. Anything short of this is man-made trickery.
"Technical details aside, pictures of falling leaves are either mistakes or strokes of luck. Gravity, light, and leaf must all morph together in the great autumnal hand of God and the Mother of all Nature. Well, something like that. The thing is, I know the metaphor of falling leaf is deep, deeper than the obvious one that falls off the trees of our short-lived and precious lives, but I’m not sure I really want to go there at the risk of sounding sentimental and trite—as if I haven’t already succumbed. Even it does it warrant an explanation, I’ll just say that right now I’ve chosen to avoid thoughts about death and my own existential place in the universe for the simple fact the leaves have begun to teach me that life is best lived with all the spontaneity of Now! They have forced me to rethink the relation I have to nature and time, whether I’m wasting it or putting it to good use. Like the Zen master hath said, “Awakening to this present instant we realize the infinite is the finite of each instant.”