We don’t usually feature such grainy shots for our lead photo, but this is the best we could find of this remarkable tree (plus we blew it up to fit our format). It’s an ‘after’ photo of a Kishu shimpaku juniper by Steve Tolley.
When I first saw the before and after shots of this remarkable Kishu shimpaku, Master Kimura’s revolutionary transformations immediately came to mind (some examples of Kimura’s transformations are here, here and here). I won’t say much more; we’ll let the photos and Steve Tolley’s text (below) do the talking.
Before.
Here’s some of what Steve Tolley has to say about his extraordinary transformation of a somewhat ordinary tree:
“This is a juniper that had sat in my nursery for some time. Just an average piece of material sitting between many wonderful bonsai and yamadori material trees and going virtually un-noticed.
A number of visitors commented that it looked out of place in the nursery. I guess that they did not take the time to look at the trees styling possibilities with so many other seductive trees around.
It is the sort of tree you see in many nurseries. Quite tall and straight with a blob of foliage far away from the nebari. However it did offer several obvious styling options, and what follows is what we chose for this particular tree.”
Here are some ‘during’ photos. You can see all of photos and text here.
All of the photos in this post are from Steve Tolley’s website. You can also enjoy Steve’s bonsai on facebook.