Fall Colors

My attempt at some fall colors, water, and sunset all in one shot... Lay it on me.... What do you think??

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OK - I'll have a go.

My first thought was wow what beautiful colours and great time of day. The exposure seemed to look well balanced.

I then started to grow cold of the picture for the following reasons:

1. My eye couldn't rest anywhere in the picture. My eye wanted to be taken to where the path was leading, but kept getting pulled away by the bright sun. I think you should have chosen better where you wanted your viewer's eye to be drawn and personally, as the shot was about autumn/fall colours, I would have had the sun not being a distraction.
   
2. I felt the bench could have been used much more strongly to lead the eye into the picture. Personally I would have explored the idea of getting lower making the bench work on the left like the trees do on the right to lead your eye in.
   
3. I think your cloning at the base of the tree on the left is terrible and a very obvious distraction. It suggested a hurried and thrown together representation of your work.
   
4. The reflection of the sun at the base of the tree on the right should have been avoided as it adds another distraction.
   
5. I think you should have moved the sticks from the bench before pressing the shutter.
   
6. I don't like the white hole in the canopy of the trees on the left as it is too close to the intersection of where the top and left hand lines of the 'rule of thirds' intersect where your eye would favour a strong or neutral feature in the image rather than a distracting patch of white.

Thanks I appreciate it.... Yes my cloning/healing in the left is a joke. I need some serious help on this...
I hope this is a little better (without getting lower to the ground)

IMAGE LINK: http://averymckenna.sm​ugmug.com …388608&k=t5nBwn​M&lb=1&s=A

I like that much better now swbkrun, although it would be interesting to see what others say too.

As an experiment I just cropped the top 20% off your new image to see what it looked like and think it worked quite well; I felt it brought me as the viewer onto the path you were on and I even started to like the sun being there.

Nice picture - I like it now, although keep working on the cloning. There are some good tutorials on You Tube. The circular blobs you had showing have gone, but it looks like you have created steps there now.

My crop ran just below the top limb of the right hand tree, leaving the sun on what would then become the top third line.