Evening at the beach

I took this last night about an hour before sunset. No post processing except to crop out the edge of the tree that I missed while framing the shot. I mostly like the picture, but I think the colors and textures are kind of off. I was having trouble getting the exposure settings on my camera right, so any comments, suggestions for next time, etc would be welcome!

ISO 100, 1/160s, f/9 @ 55mm (kit lens)

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

I think that you could expose for the sky to get more color (the reason that it is bland looking is due to being overexposed. Currently, my guess is that the camera is averaging the dark foreground with the bright sky. Having the sun in the exposure will confuse the camera's light reading, so point away from the sun to get a reading. There a lot of interesting things in the picture: the people, the boats, the fence, the sunset colors, etc. The problem that you are faced with is to chose what part of this scene as the principal subject. this is not easy because it is all worthy of being in a photo -- just not the same one. If you allow editing of your pictures (denoted by the IMAGE EDITING OK beneath your title block), I can show a couple examples of what I might do with the picture.

Yep! That's the Seattle sky...and water for that matter...
Nice!
HP