Desert Bonzai

Saw this little guy growing out of the rock from afar and thought I'd go over and investigate. After climbing about looking at the different angles, I decided to set an off-camera strobe high above up on the rocks to enhance the moon light, and waited for sunset. Kind of curious to hear how this type of image resonates with others.

As always, any comments, suggestions or critiques are always welcomed.

Cheers!

~Eric

Great image Eric, it resonates very well with me! I really like the texture in the rock in the bottom left, and it's kind of a mind-bender to figure out where this guy is growing from. Overall the processing looks crisp.

I really like this Eric! It has a very strong sense of place and time. There is a branch on the right, near the right side, that you might want to burn down just a little. The tree is simply gorgeous!

Well done!

-P

Eric, I really like the scene and it is very unique. These somewhat rare sightings of trees that seem to be growing out of rock surfaces always make strong photographic subjects especially when they are isolated ones such as this. Additionally, this one seems very healthy too.
I would say the strobe does seem pretty intense overall. The moon sure was extremely bright as well looking into the BG area here.

Beautiful image. I'd say you did a great job with the lighting. The tree stands out nicely from the different backgrounds and the foreground rock from which it's growing stands out sharply, as well.

The flash is a bit hot and cool for the type of light so I would have probably put a gold color gel over the flash to warm it up or a gold omnibounce cranked up a few notches to diffuse it and warm it up.

Great find.

The off camera strobe which is daylight balanced works very well for this. Very nice.

- Dan.

Eric,

Excellent! I think the strobe did more than enhance the moonlight - I think it mimicked it! The angle is especially important and I don't think I would have thought the lighting was anything but natural. I think this is great. Congrats!

Lon

Eric, very nice take here. i might suggest a touch down burn on those foreground rocks, otherwise it looks great. nicely composed too...

I will be a bit of a contrarian here, but with the flash, it almost looks to me as if it were shot in a studio. You have some beautiful soft light in the background with great colors and then the foreground is lit in kind of a white light that kind of has a daylight look to it. Some light more matching to the middle ground would suit me better. I like the composition and love the sky. But I am definitely the minority here, so don't pay me no mind.

Thanks for all the honest feedback everyone... it's very much appreciated. This kind of stuff is still a work in progress for me, so I'll definitely be thinking about all the suggestions during any future attempts that involve techniques like this.

~Eric

I like the way you lit this up. Cool shot, Eric.