I personally love the image. For one I love the colours, they are beautifully vibrant, but still very soft. I love the long exposure and of course the way it creates the smooth look of the water which looks good most of the time.
I think you chose an interesting object to photograph, and while this kind of photograph might not be the most original it works well and is a pleasure to the eye. I do actually like the vignetting, it makes on focus more on the center, but I preferred it if the vignette on the tree would be a little less strong.

I think it is quite good composition - wise, I would have loved if the little island out there would have been a little more to the left, but this would have been hard to achieve because with changing the angle you would have probably also changed the rest and not for the better.

But overall a very beautiful work!

Beautiful image and the sense of time is great
Im going to be really picky the other critiques have left some great praise and I want to reassure you that there comments are valid you have a great composition sense of time and the subject is interesting. My only real complaint about the artistic elements of the photo is i feel the gradient is a little too harsh the corners of the sky are too black for my taste with something as bright as the subject in the foreground is.

Im going to come across as grumpy but I really want to point out an issue which can really curse your images and burn a lot of time in post processing youve got these splotches all over the image in the water and the solid tones of the sky Look dead center than follow the branch down to the left and you will see one of them the sky also has several that show up here on my monitor, im assuming your sensor is VERY dirty, another spot is about a third of the way in from the left and than follow up you will find it about a sixth of the way up. There are also many other splotches that look like dust but could perhaps be other things such as jpeg artifacts or post processing dodge burn marks.

This kind of dust is natural working in the environment many of your pictures are taken in. One suggestion is you are working with a camera that is not weather sealed when your at the beach you've got to protect it, get a roll of gaffers tape and wrap it around where the lens meets the body it will greatly improve your seal between lens and camera. When i shoot in sandy conditions i will often take a clear plastic bag and cut a hole for the lens and tape it up with gaffers tape. If you use a ziplock bag with the opening facing the back you can open it to look through the viewfinder use controls ect than seal it up. It looks ugly but it keeps sand out. Sea sand is especially bad its sticky and has residue on it.

Anyways what you need to do is tomorrow, take the camera out set it to iso 100 put your longest zoom lens on it and shut the aperture down to as low as it can go, take a picture with the auto exposure set to +1 ev and shoot a picture of something with a solid background like the sky or a white wall...dont worry about shutter time in fact the blurrier the better.

The spots on your sensor will show up and you can go from there, start with holding the camera upside down and using a giottos rocket blower to dislodge the particles on your sensor.


Anyways hope this helps keep up the great work you have some very humbling photos