Ecstasy

Hey!

You wanted me to have a look at this and give you a critique.
As I tell everyone; don't mind the ratings, they don't give you any valuable information.

Photographically:

This first things that hits me when I see this one is the composition. This is a very beautiful image, but you could give in a extra pop with another framing.

If you as yourself the following question:
What do I like better, the sky or the ocean? Personally I think I prefer the ocean here for the composition I have in mind for this one. If you lower your camera so that the horizon and up is 1 third of the image you'll have less opensky, but you'll still have the beautiful colors that the sunset gives the horizon. The way vignette in the bottom of the image leads the viewer step by step as the light increases to the stones in the ocean.

By moving the view just slightly to the right, you would also ensure that the closest stone becomes at a position which is can be called a powercorner in the rule fo thirds. There isn't much happening on the leftside of the image, so this could be a viable option if there isn't obstacles on the righthandside which I don't see now.

Not a big deal, but if you have a close look at the horizonline it tilts just a little down on the rightside, we're talking about maybe 0,5 degrees or something small like that, this is easily fixed in either CameraRaw or Photoshop.

Post-processing:
I would also consider increasing the vibrance in this image. This would give you a slight pop to the horizon as the colors right now look natural enough, but it's a little flat. To quote Scott Kelby when it comes to the function of vibrance "It makes "boring" colors get more interesting". Note that there is a big difference in vibrance vs saturation. Vibrance is often the more natural option to go for.

Here is a link to a video on compositon and how it can be done by Scott Kelby.
[link]

I'd recommend you to have a look as it's a good video and might give you some inspiration as well <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/s/s…" width="15" height="15" alt="" title=" (Smile)"/>

This is a beautiful capture all in all and you definately got something good going. Keep it up and you'll get very far <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/s/s…" width="15" height="15" alt="" title=" (Smile)"/>

Hope this was helpful <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/s/s…" width="15" height="15" alt="" title=" (Smile)"/>