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First things first - last night and this morning I went through, thinning out the foliage, taking off the unwanted or underside branches. This does a few things. It lets me see what the branch structure looks like, so that I can make better styling decisions. It opens up the tree to facilitate wiring. And perhaps most importantly, it allows sunlight to reach the trunk, to stimulate vigorous back-budding and compact growth.

A note about technique at this stage: people often say that you need to pinch back all of the foliage on shimpaku junipers. While this is true if you trying to maintain the shape of an already styled tree, this is not a good idea in the early stages of styling, such as what I am doing here. Instead, I went through, thinning out the bud density, cleaning the shoots out from in between the branch forks, and so forth. I largely left the tips intact; this will stimulate vigorous growth on down the road.

Here's the tree this afternoon, after thinning.