Decay and Regrowth

I found this a difficult scene to process. When I taking the image, I was mainly drawn to the light on the water through the gap, with the fallen trunk leading into the scene. However when editing, the patch of sunlight across the middle became more apparent and I had dark/light/dark/light stripes from bottom to top.

I decided to make the sunlit undergrowth and trunk more prominent and subdue the background. It seemed to make more sense to have one area of interest and simplify the image which was otherwise confusing.

I used a telephoto lens to compress the scene because the trunk was rather long.