Foggy morning by the river

I've been trying to get a decent picture of the river on a foggy morning. This is hopefully going to be a gift for someone who lives along this river. I'm looking for some feedback on what I can do to improve this capture? And also, what do you think I should do the next I'm trying to capture this image? Thanks a lot

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What time of day was it taken?

This was taken about 30 minutes after sunrise.

The image has good sharpness, good reflections, and like that the 3 boats are lined up. For me it lacks pop.


Maybe if it was shot further to the right of where you were? The fog would have been in the background of the boats. Kind of making them imerging from the fog but keeping the reflections. It would have changed the boats being lined up in the same manner but might have put more of a dramatic look to it.

You are right, it does lack pop! Thank you so much for taking the time to critique. I shall wait for the fog to come again

The image has potential in post.
Here is a quick edit of the jpg adding contrast and tweaking the colors a bit.

That looks so much better!

I did all my clean up in DPP, that the only software I'm familiar with. I played with the highlights, contrast and saturation and cropped it a bit. Would I be able to do this in DPP?

Would you like me to put the raw file on dropbox and send you a link? I would not mind an explanation of what you did either -

Thanks so much, I really appreciate the time and effort

Sure, give me the RAW and I'll give you back a full res .tiff file.

You wouldn't be able to do what I did exactly in DPP as I used luminosity masks to control zone for contrast and color.

That sounds great. Thanks a lot. I shall send it to you this evening.

I feel the composition is lacking. To me the focus of the image are the 3 boats, yet fully 1/2 the image ( the right half ) have nothing to do with the boats and just steal image real estate. Crop at least 1/3 off the right to pull the focus onto the boats.

The little boathouse on the right plays some minor significance in the scene

i can wait for a few more days to see if more boats get parked in the waters but the fog is pretty unpredictable.

The composition needs boats, the boathouse and fog.

thanks a lot

Well that boathouse continually draws my eyes away from the boats. It creates tension in the scene, makes the focus jump around.

If you are after a scene with tension, then you’ve achieved it here, but a calm foggy scene typically is not created for tension.

Just my opinion on what is presented.

I like the original processing better,. as it portrays the foggy river in the wee hours better. The processed image looses the fog and time of day.

My larger problem is composition. The image seems to be a photo of some boats, with the one being front and center, and yet the shoreline houses (particularly Hogloff's boathouse) compete with the boat image.

P.O.V. seems high,. and starting with water in the foreground is uninteresting.

It's a great time of day, and atmospheric conditions with what I think can be a good location.

Thank you so much for the feedback, Hogloff and CDS. I totally appreciate it.

And I'm glad your eyes are being drawn to the boathouse. It is supposed to be the anchor, so to speak. Hogloff, you kind of hit the nail on the head with the tension comment. I would have loved the fog to be a lot denser, covering everything except the boathouse and a boat or two. The fog is supposed to represent danger or at least something mysterious. The boathouse is supposed to represent safety. I want the eyes to dart between the boats and the boathouse, and know that the boats are finally in the safety of the harbor manned by the boathouse.

I did crop the image a bit but left a lot of the water so that the reflection of the mast of the leading boat still shows. Let me try cropping it a bit more and see what you think of it.

Thanks once again for all the feedback.

Once you provide the RAW I'll give you a version w/ more fog and see what you think.