Photo here (http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j214/major_bloodnok/misc/Carcassonne2006-08-1105-01.jpg)

I think the problem should be obvious - is there any way to bring out the statues and/or de-emphasise the background? I should say that I had pretty much Hobson's choice in the positioning and timing of this shot - passing through early afternoon (harsh light) and not much room to vary the angle to lose the background trees.

Or do I just give it up and treat it as a holiday snapshot? I'd like to do more to it, because I like the pose of the statues - more interesting than the usual self-important constipated look of so many...

You could make a selection of the statue, copy it to a new layer then blur the background with a gausian blur.

I would use a "Lens Blur" on the background to give it that intentional depth of field look, but you more importantly, you need to alter the color of the background or the statues because even when the background is blurred, you still need some color contrast between the foreground and background to make the statues pop. The foreground and background are currently are both currently very green. Try warming up the background to give it a fall feel.

Here is an example off what you could do:

Blur background
De-saturate the background somewhat
Sharpen the statue

I guessed the statue was bronze.
Adjust the color to be "warmer" but not as much as me... this was just and example...


Photo here (http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j214/major_bloodnok/misc/Carcassonne2006-08-1105-01.jpg)

I think the problem should be obvious - is there any way to bring out the statues and/or de-emphasise the background? I should say that I had pretty much Hobson's choice in the positioning and timing of this shot - passing through early afternoon (harsh light) and not much room to vary the angle to lose the background trees.

Or do I just give it up and treat it as a holiday snapshot? I'd like to do more to it, because I like the pose of the statues - more interesting than the usual self-important constipated look of so many...

Here is what I was thinking . . .

The statue should have a green tint since bronze tends to turn green with age.

Well I had a bit of a play with it and ended up making a selection of the statue and plonking that onto a layer mask (and bluring the mask a little). Did a lvls and curves (warm up the bronze a tad) adjustment layers clipped to the statue layer. I did a shadows/highlights adjustment (set the history state marker here) and applied an unsharp mask to the statue layer then clicked around a bit here and there with the history brush to soften the USM on the 'further back bits' of the statue. Used 2 duplicate layers for the backgound: one with a subtle box blur, the other with a diffuse filter at 50% opacity(under stylize in the filter menu). Um... I think that's all...oh, the colour (and gamma for that matter) may not be quite as I intended, My monitors aren't properly calibrated at the mo.

This is my try.

dc

You could make a selection of the statue, copy it to a new layer then blur the background with a gausian blur.

Here is one following Swampy suggestion

Here is my try i used quick mask mode to select the trees and then used a motion blur set at 18 degrees.

I did not alter the foreground. The background I used Lens blur and a HSL adjustment layer to darken it and slightly decrease saturation

can't really tell where the statue ends and the trees start...
But you could also cut it out and place it on a suitable background..
Lasa

Thanks for all the replies people. I'll have a go at some of them when I get back from my weekend in Paris and let you know how I got on.