Recently I was given three akamatsu (Japanese red pine) work on. The way it works here is we are assigned a tree to work on, given some very simple instructions eg. Wire this tree, cut this tree, etc and the rest is up to us.
Akamatsu can be tricky to work with because they can snap with no warning when you try to bend them, especially small finger thick branches. Also the needles can some times be slightly frail, even when hardened off (depending from tree to tree). Aside that I think they are very nice trees, they can have really good bark in time, delicate looking and respond with multiple buds when candle cut.

Here’s the first tree that I styled, before work.

It wasn’t a straight forward tree. It wasn’t going to be a normal informal upright and the front wasn’t obvious to me at the time, hence…