This image was taken on a week-long camping trip in Joshua Tree NP in November 2018. Cloudless skies limited the dramatic impact, so I attempted to capture the strong side-lighting to create depth and texture.
Specific Feedback Requested
General feedback on the image overall - exposure, composition, lighting. Would perhaps a tighter perspective helped compensate for the blank sky (i.e., zoom in or move closer to rocks to fill frame)?
Technical Details
24-70mm f/2.8 lens @62mm; 1/40 sec, f/8, ISO 400. Minimal LR processing (highlights, shadows, contrast, vibrance).
Robert
Thanks for submitting your image for the guest critique by yours truly 
Joshua Tree NP…One of my favorite places! I enjoy this area quite a bit! I found it incredibly challenging to photograph, but that’s what makes it so fun! It’s like a huge puzzle trying get all the pieces to fit properly. All those Joshua trees have unique character. Which you captured with this fellow in the foreground.
Let’s start with the composition here. I like your foreground choice. As stated, this Joshua tree has great character. Nice scraggly arms with nice smooth bark. Interesting! I like it! I wish you could have isolated the tree a little more so the focus goes more onto the tree itself. The arm of the tree coming out to the right is touching the background rocks. Maybe a slightly lower perspective could have helped out there. The out of focus bush in the foreground on the right is distraction. Maybe try to clone out if possible. If not I would just make a mental note to be mindful of elements in your foreground that could distract from the rest of the scene. The tree on the left edge of the frame isn’t adding much to the scene. You could do a crop there, but it will put the other tree in the foreground closer to the edge of the frame. Again…mental notes to take as you’re composing in the field.
The side light you captured here looks awesome. The one thing that I like to see in images like this that have that strong light, is I like to “feel” the light. When I say I want to feel the light, I want to get the feeling of being in the scene. Take the viewer there! Take the viewer on that visual journey. I know the light is there…let me feel it! Where there’s darkness, there’s light! By bringing the exposure down, the light in the scene will stand out more. You will get that feeling of feeling the light. Now, when you bring that exposure down, its going to create another problem. I call that starting a fire. The fire that will get started is the blues in the sky. Once you bring that exposure down, the blues will saturate. A basic Hue/saturation adjustment layer, selecting blue, then reducing the saturation will help that issue out.
I feel the yellows could be desaturated here as well. It will feel a lot more natural in those regards. Same as before, open up a hue/saturation adjustment layer, select yellow then bring down the saturation. A slight tweak in the white balance, and just cooling it off some will help with those yellows as well.
I will attach a quick edit to show some of the suggestions I made.
Hope this helps out some Robert! If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
DT
Thank you for your critique; I value the feedback. I like the result of your edits and think that I will work with the original with these ideas. I have yet to explore a lot of LR processing (layers, etc.) in hopes of keeping the original vision intact, but I can see how these kinds of edits improve the final results and I am in the process of learning more about post-processing.
