Leli's Tree

Taken on a recent camping trip to Boca Reservoir near Lake Tahoe and Truckee California. No clouds in the sky, so I looked for more landscapes within the landscape. Took a short hike from the campground and saw this tree standing all alone, and wanted to capture it. I hiked around looking for a good composition...every once in a while taking some other pictures. After 5 or 10 minutes I looked up and saw how the trees were glowing behind this tree and started to frantically look for a composition. I had never taken photos in these conditions so I didn't know how long I had before the background would lose all interest. I finally came to this scene a couple of minutes later. I think everything complements each other well. The foreground may be a bit busy, but I like how it depicts a riparian flood plain.

editing...
changed temp in raw, did some minor curves, selective color, brightness and contrast, and finally an exposure layer which brightened the image perfectly.
after that did some sharpening in lab and "high pass" resized and loaded to the web.

EDIT***
reworked color in LAB

Let me know what you think.
Thanks.