Western Juniper

Out of the park, Preston.  This is exquisite;  excellent composition, and beautiful & realistic colors.

Another oldie and goodie, Preston.  The trees have magnificent form and beautiful color. Nicely composed. 

Nice composition, and great details and textures. It is amazing to see how trees survive and even thrive in the desert regions.

Really nice, Preston.  Love the outstanding detail in this comp.  The yellows add to the pallet of these gnarly old trees.  Such a wonderful wide ranging species.  One of my favorites.

Thanks for your comments, everyone!

Angela, I just wanted to clarify that this location is not desert. It is the lower elevation of the Sub-Alpine Zone in the Sierra.
The Sierra Nevada subalpine zone occurs between 8,000–12,000 ft, and is characterized by an open woodland of several conifer species, including whitebark pine, lodgepole pine, western white pine, mountain hemlock, and Sierra juniper.
--P

Real nice intimate landscape, Preston. I love the character of the junipers and that splash of yellow adds another wonderful element to the scene. It may be just me because no one else has mentioned it, but I could see those couple of boulders on the left side being burned down just a touch. Either way this is a beauty.

Ed

Beautiful work, Preston. Worthy of a Sierra Wilderness calendar page. I too like these trees and am always drawn to them up above the timber line. An alternate crop could be from the top removing some of green branches and a bit from the left, thus making it about the tree trunk and the 2 front rocks. Wonderful work. Thanks for sharing.

The composition and colors are very very beautiful, Preston. But what really strikes me about this image is the "sweetness", for lack of a better word. I am convinced that it is not just the fact that it is a film image - I think that this is the kind of feel that one gets from analog-era lenses, even if you use them on digital cameras. Digital lenses tend to be too "harsh", I'm not sure how to describe it. But I am moving away from digital lenses. For the past year or so I have been carrying only manual focus lenses on all of my photo outings, and am slowly selling off all of my digital lenses, I may only keep one or two for "action" shots. Who knows, I may be old fashioned. Sorry for the too long philosophical commentary 

Absolutely exquisite, Preston.  The tonality and color of the trees is beyond beautiful in my mind, and your composition is simply stunning.  This must look so good in a print.  Fantastic.