creative landscape: before and after

I like to show how I do what I do sometimes. :) Here is a before and after from yesterday.

I saw this little tree on my drive home and thought it would be a nice subject.

The image was underexposed due to the bright sun that was near the tree. I underexposed and I used the Gradient tool in Lightroom to selectively bring up the exposure on the bottom of the frame.  After that, I cropped to a square and used the Distortion tool under the Lens Corrections to bow the horizon a little bit.

The image was finished with a bit of added exposure and a few swipes of a pretty teal color with the adjustment brush at low flow.