The summer sun sets one last time

Taken on the evening of the Autumn Equinox… rip this one apart and tell me what you think! Any comments, suggestions, tips, and critiques are, as always, highly appreciated!

Long exposure of moving water makes it look like fog instead of water. Just went through a similar problem with another image in the last couple days. There is such a thing as too long an exposure.

The lighting in this picture is great.

And the composition is great.

Except for the shutter speed, the whole thing is great!

Long exposures and short exposures are both equally usable. It depends upon what the photographer's vision / intent is at the time. Neither is correct, neither is incorrect.

Some feel that the technique of "smoothed water" has been a little overused as of late - a "fad" as it were, and I began a while back to fall into this camp. Seemed like every landscape I viewed used this technique.

However, with this pic I think it works. I like it. I think the long exposure smoothing out the water removed potential highlights from the water (if captured at a faster shutter speed) and as such allowed the eyes to be drawn to the subtle sunlight and highlights on the foreground rocks. If it were a faster shutter speed, there would have been an ocean-full of hightlights that may have distracted from this nice, subtle, gorgeous foreground light and colors. It would also have pulled attention away from the nicely colored clouds, upper-right. I would have liked to see those rocks in focus, tho.

As Robert said, composition is good.

P.S. - thanks a lot for depressing me ! (reminding me summer is gone)

Apart from the water/fog I like it. You will find that those 2 groups of people (fog lovers and haters) have very polarized views on the subject, as stated before neither is right/wrong cause you can't please all the people all the time. If you like that style more power to you. Although I'm not a fog fan, I quite like how it worked in this image. Its not fog for the sake of fog it does help isolate the rocks.

Speaking of "Polarisers" (worst link ever), I totally would have stuck one on to enhance the contrast, and cut some of the reflections out from the water and rocks. But thats just being picky.

I actually like the water fog look but it seems like the rocks are OOF