Beautiful photography...I thought the tree looked kind of haunting before I read your description. How did you get this effect?
You are a very astute observer. I created that piece for a "Spooky Tree" competition at EyeFetch.com. Basically, the original photo was cropped, widened, stretched, sharpened, bulged, softened, contrast and lighting tweaked, saturated and hue adjusted. It took about 3 hours total.
louisp