Personally, I think you handled the overexposure and lack of vibrance in the original image very well. The mist in the upper third of the image acts as a vignette or gradient fill layer to make that portion of the image more ‘boring’, for lack of a better word which helps to draw one’s eye to the branch. I don’t see anything wrong with the amount of ‘dead space’ in the shot. It lacks clarity or focus (which a background usually should) but it has enough texture to add some depth to the image. Crop the mist and mountains out or shoot from a higher angle and all you would be left with is a dead branch lying in dead-looking grass and you would lose some of the detail in the shot without making the subject any more defined. I do think that the portion of the branch that extends into the upper left corner forms a lead-out line, but it also forms an intriguing ‘V’ with the mountain in the background. The contrast isn’t too high in my opinion; it actually brings out more of the detail in the branch.I believe the image captures the mood of a stormy day well…converting it to B&W and adding a vignette would make it more gloomy, if that effect was desired.
