Vying for position.

Stephanie,

Great title, and I agree with you about the forces of nature - always fascinating if not downright impressive.

Great tree root here and it looks to me it's pushing back the rock and "vying for position" just as you've titled it.

I think you did a good job framing this, although I might be tempted to crop even a tad more off the top and a little off the bottom.  Processing wise I would suggest taking the magenta down quite a bit.  While the root and rock the color looks good, the grays of the trunks and trees up top are fairly strong in magenta as are the leaves a bit.  The only other thing might be to drop the high values a little around the center portion either with a levels/curves layer or simply burn with a brush.

Nicely seen and captured. thanks for posting.

Lon

This is a very good story telling image. The heavy lean by the large trunk implies the power struggle that occurred. There is a global magenta cast but I would brush it out in the upper areas because it does give a color boost to the bottom leaves. I also might burn in that large bg triangle to the right of the tree because it's drawing attention away from the 'struggle'. Thank you for sharing.

I like the idea here, Stephanie. The color looks good, but I would suggest burning down the background to better balance the light. The red leaves are wonderful.
--P 

Thanks so much for your helpful suggestions about the color balance in this photo.