After a short hike through Devil’s Postpile, you come to Rainbow falls. I arrived just as the sun was rising over my shoulder and was taken by the rays of light through the mist. I discovered this pine perched precariously on the cliff-side and carefully maneuvered to this position. I would have like to move a bit to the left, but the lack of ground became the challenge. C&C appreciated.
D800e 120mm f18 1/6s iso250
Thanks
Wade
Oh gosh, how I wish you would have isolated the waterfall with a long telephoto because the light there is super cool, Wade. You have captured and processed the water texture right. As presented, I think the scene is almost cut off on the left side. I am still not sure how I feel about the pine tree.
Great things going on around that waterfall with the light hitting the spray and well controlled highlights there! The pine tree adds a nice second subject, but it takes up a bit too much space as it is in my opinion. But moving too the left was not possible, but what about a second shot by rotating the camera to stitch them together for a bit wider view and maybe some more balance? It looks like the falls continue some more, or were there many distractions?
Wade, I am normally not a big fan of sunlit waterfalls (prefer overcast light), but the light here on the falls is really special, and makes for a very unique image. I think your processing of the light is handled very well here too. Too bad you didn’t bring hip waders with you, then you could have gotten over to the left for a better angle 
While I love the light on the water, to me this image feels like it has two main subjects competing with each other for attention, the tree and the falls. (and both of them are bright, which draws attention to both). As Adhika implies, a telephoto extraction of the falls only may be a stronger image, but your limited angle of view probably prevented you from doing that.
I did a rework of this image radically darkening the right side, which I think puts more emphasis on the falls. This also changes the feeling of the image, which you may not want to do in terms of your vision for it. Just twisting the image to illustrate an enhanced emphasis on the falls.
The waterfall looks really very nice but I do think that the wee pine tree is not a particularly attractive one and being sunlit it does drag some undeserved (in my opinion) attention away from that very lovely sunlit cascade.
Wade,
I have a similar response to comments posted so far. The falls and specifically the light is just spectacular. I think the inclusion of the pine certainly works well in telling a story and clearly the juxtaposition between the two elements caught your eye. I think Ed’s edit works very well and I think improves the overall presentation; the water gets back a little of it’s glory - and still the pine tree and the story you’re presenting is preserved as well.
One thought I had was taking Ed’s edits - and then cropping off the pool at the bottom. I think the pool at the bottom works well as presented, so cropping is not remove a bad element. A crop might be to change perceptions a little bit. Without the bottom pool, the viewer no longer has a reference if or where the waterfall ends. Removing the pool might actually shift the importance of the image back to the pine… Just a thought.
Lon
The light here is truly incredible and I really really like your style of processing. This scene is just magical. But, I constantly want to push the frame open to the left. I think this tree could have worked as a lead in to the falls if you had gotten more above it and had it opening onto the entirety of the cascade, but it sounds like that was not possible given the footing. I also agree with @Adhika_Lie that a telephoto composition of the light hitting the different rivulets and cascades could also be really really amazing here. Nice work!
