Hi Justin,
Your good points, my prior thoughts and subsequent ones all lead me back to my original premise, which is: these three elements were not made to be displayed together -- which is the overriding fault of this entire exhibit.
I appreicate your further dissection of this composition and I now tend to agree that the more "comfortable" composition in the original picture works best, but unfortunately that's not saying much. I suggest that it works best because the complimentary elements are unsuitable for this tree in the first place. I continue to be disturbed by the non-contextual makeup of the components - a marsh theme with a mountain larch (complete with prominent jin!). In light of this, any playing around with further compositional elements (stands of various types) is a bit fruitless, in my opinion.
As to my other choices for illustration, you're right on the money. As this exercise was done to highlight problem issues for those here who were not too familiar with these kinds of artistic concerns, I thought that the more obvious ones would work best. Surely, that was what was on Glenn's mind when putting forth his arguments as well ;-).
Thanks for your astute observations. I'm grateful for the opportunity to kick this stuff around a bit more.
As to our point of view (flat images rather than being there in-person), I have to observe that real-life viewing is usually best for finding pleasurable agreement and photos are best for finding faults -- which is a good reason to critique our own trees in photos rather than merely by looking at them on the bench. C'est la vie! ;-)
Kind regards,
Andy Rutlege
b u n j i n | d e s i g n ::
www.bunjindesign.com
zone 8, Texas