I hope you don't mind but I plugged that first image into Lightroom for some fun and experimentation. (right-click, view image for full size)
Here are the changes I made:
I did a lot to correct the color cast and try to squeeze some natural warmth out of it. If this was shot in JPEG with a badly guessed white balance that is the biggest issue, other than the exposure.
Add some heavy vignetting and you get more of gloomy and mystical feel:
Hey @pfunk thanks for that. I don't mind you playing with those images at all :-)
Yes it was shot in jpeg and since I'm still new to photography, it was auto white balance.
I don't have Photoshop or Lightroom and I don't tend to have time to do much in the way of post processing. so pretty much all of my photos are just as they came out of the camera.
If work ever calms down to the point that I can spend some time learning how to do post processing then, then I'll probably get into it.
But thanks for showing what is possible with a little tweaking.
When you want to dive into some photo tweaking, RawTherapee (all desktop OS) and Darktable (Linux and Mac only) are both free. It's pretty amazing what you can do in terms of white balance and exposure latitude with the raw files. The sensors are able to capture a lot more than can be stored in a JPEG.