so anyway i finally got it working and wanted to share because this forum helped me a lot when i was starting out. flew out to this reservoir near my house at like 6am last saturday ? honestly almost didnt go because i was tired and the forecast looked iffy ? and the fog was sitting right on the water in this really thin layer. i've flown that same spot probably 15 times and it always looks kind of boring but something about the early morning light just completely changed it.

the compositon thing that finally clicked for me was stopping trying to get everything in frame. i used to always pull way back to show as much as possible but this time i just focused on one small section of the shoreline where the fog was thickest and framed it with some trees on the left third. edited it pretty minimally, just brought down the highlights a little and added a tiny bit of warmth. sometimes less is more i guess. anyway if youre frustrated with your shots just keep going out, the conditions matter so much more than i realized

that sounds like a genuinely beautiful shot. the fog on water thing is so hard to time right, ive missed it so many times because i either got there too late or the wind picked up and it dissipated. do you check a specific weather app for fog conditions or just got lucky that morning?

this is exactly the kind of post i needed to read today lol. ive been so caught up in trying to find dramatic landscapes that i keep overlooking the spot right near my house that i know really well. theres a canal about 10 minutes away that i've written off as boring but maybe i just havent been there at the right time. your point about not cramming everything into the frame is something i intellectually knew but clearly havent internalized yet because i still do it constantly. gonna go back to basics this weekend i think.