Bonzai landscape

My photo tour group and I visited a garden today in the Huangshan area of China and photographed the most beautiful bonsai trees I've ever seen. Some of them are as old as 120 years. The artistry, and the patience to nurture these plants over many decades, is impressive to say the least. This shot looks like a landscape, but in fact the bonsai arrangement is about 10 feet wide. I added the storm clouds and the reflection to give the impression that this is a mountain scene. Blending clouds with trees and leaves isn't a straightforward procedure. Rather, the composite requires a combination of using a layer mask plus the gradient tool to attenuate the clouds in such a way that they look perfectly believable at the edges where the two photos meet. I teach this technique in my home Photoshop workshop and I also explain it in my eBook on Photoshop. It's an invaluable technique because it solves one of the biggest problems nature photographers have: How to replace a sky above a landscape with so much minute detail. I added the reflection using the Photoshop plugin Flood made by flamingpear.com.