to kick or not to kick?

I've been trying out some simple effect on pictures and this looked kinda cool. Mostly there's something with the light "wrong" to make the photos look like this. They are just too dark or too light. Well I'm sure I could make it on GIMp but I'm still in the process learning to use it. =)

The horses just happened to have their feet in the air. They weren't fighting or anything.