Interesting forest you've found. The gnarled trees are pretty foreboding. Looks like you might have had some water drops on your lens during the capture? It'd be nice to see those go. You can decrease the "obviousness" of them by using dodge in PS.
I would have said Hopelessness, it just flows better. But beside the point, I find this image extremely busy though there are blurred/ghosted areas that really cause my main distraction. If there would have been a way to have the light come from inside instead of outside I think it would have been a much stronger piece. However as it is, it is just too busy for me with no clear clarity of view.
OK, I'm going through the Free Study submissions, purposefully finding those images I think are shot with a less conventional eye - this is one of those images! Thanks for offering something that isn't just DPC friendly eye-candy (though of course there's nothing wrong with eye-candy). I'll be picking one of these images for the Mu (most underrated) award:
Positives: Well, the image does communicate a sense of foreboding and the difference in the lighting of the branches offers the viewer an interesting pattern - almost like a lightening storm.
Critical stuff: The level of intrinsic interest in this scene is pretty low and I'm not sure that whatever choices you made in post-processing was ever going to overcome that. The main issue for me is how flat the image looks - perhaps you have tried to eliminate a sense of depth with your edit; if that is the case, perhaps a different title such as 'The impenetrable Forest' may have communicated the wall like nature of the scene a little better.
Overall: A difficult image to like, though the pattern of the branches is interesting, there is little else in the scene to hold a viewers interest. The good pattern might make this an excellent candidate for an overlay texture but as a standalone image it's not one I warm to. Apologies.
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