Forget the fog - it's an excellent portrayal of a ship rolling in heavy seas. The problem I have is that the masts look like they're leaning forward when compared to the body of the ship. And if it was mine I'd soften the sky somewhat.

I think I understand what you're trying to achieve, and I think it's something I witnessed myself once - a small fishing boat emerging from a sharply defined mist bank. The edge of the mist bank was so clearly defined that within the length of the boat it went from being thick mist to being clear air. And to add to the contrast it was a bright sunny day and the edge of the mist bank was glowing. Unfortunately I didn't have any kind of camera with me at the time, but the memory has stayed with me.

My advice would be to not worry too much about the mist bank effect, but if you want to bring that out, have the front of the ship and the area in front of the ship much less misty. As it is there's haze front and back.

I've learned that discussions about art can be less pretentious - and more informative - than I would have thought.

My favourite activity is getting a chance to exercise my editing skills on images that have been chosen for that specific reason.

And I wish you'd give D810s as prizes for the winners of the competitions (just to make it more exciting you understand ).

And congratulations to you for running an inspiring and informative section where congeniality abounds (for the most part).

I find the clouds and the colouring of the sky more believable in this version. In particular I find the yellow of the original to be artificial (too solid and too saturated), and it's better without the unnaturally strong blue of the original. And in addition this version looks more dusty for some reason.

Coolpix S9700.

Just in case you don't get a chance to do a re-shoot, there are some marginal improvements that you can give it. You don't say what PP software you have so it's difficult to give specific advice, but if you have any sharpening software that uses deconvolution (often referred to as shake reduction or anti-blur or some such), that would be your best starting point.

In addition to sharpening, if you can't get proper sharpness, the next best thing is vividness, which can give an impression of sharpness. Clarity and Contrast are the best ways to increase vividness (as opposed to just turning up the saturation, which will have unwanted side effects). For best effect you can select the fawn for the extra Clarity and Contrast, and if you can include extra sharpening for the selection, even better.

Lightroom doesn't have anti-shake or anti-blur, but you do have some control over the sharpening process. For the following edit I put Radius and Masking full up, with the Sharpening slider at 66 (a bit more than half way to full) and the Details slider at 5 (very low). I also added a small amount of de-noise (5) with the Details slider well up (85), and I lightened it a bit.

The one thing you won't be able to do is crop. As shown it's on the limits of acceptability and even a small amount of cropping will take it beyond that limit. Fortunately the wide view suits the subject - a small fawn finding his way in the big wide world.

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Nothing radical for this one. Tried to achieve a "glowing from within" look.

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My guess would be that mist works best when it evokes an atmosphere of mystery, when the viewer is shown enough detail to capture the attention but left wondering about what can't be seen (which has got absolutely nothing to do with this shot lol).

Beaches don't have to be warm and sunny to be beautiful.

Glad you found something to like about it, JD . I suppose the weak aspect of it is that the story isn't blindingly obvious. In the winter this place is a hive of activity and the chair lift would be busy for most of the day. But since this is out of season it's almost deserted, and I hoped the mist added to the atmosphere of emptiness and desertion. Thanks for commenting.

I suppose that possibility came with the subject. Catching it when it's almost completely deserted does mean that the usual attention-grabbing activities are absent. As for the mist...... well, some people like it and some don't. If attention-grabbing is your thing then you're not likely to be the sort of person that'll find mist engagingly atmospheric, but in defence of the shot I can tell you there's no shortage of people that do.

There's no denying they do open up endless possibilities....

An interesting suggestion but not a possibility without a drone. The ground falls away quite steeply to the right. And I would miss having the chair lift disappearing up the hill into the mist. A shot from the near right would have been a possibility and would have given the chair lift more prominence.

Thank you Erich. I wasn't sure how strong that aspect of the shot was, and I couldn't think of any way to strengthen it.

The fact still remains - the important thing is whether what you have to say is worth hearing or not. The value of what you have to say shouldn't be assessed using technical criteria.

In competitions the photographs are assessed for all-round quality and that includes the technical aspects of the shots, but outside of competitions the value of what the photographer was trying to convey or portray should be seen as the most significant and relevant aspect of a photo (in my opinion). Personally I don't view photographs with the highly critical eye of a competition judge and I'm glad I don't, because I can focus on the (to my mind) more important aspects of the shots. It also makes it easier to enjoy what I'm viewing, and ultimately that is what's going to matter to everybody who views the photos (with the possible exception of competition judges). With some people their enjoyment of a photo can be spoiled if the technical aspects of the shot are anything less than perfect - frankly I don't envy them. For me the technical shortcomings would have to be quite bad before I rated the shot as being spoiled by them. Having said that, technical shortcomings are something I try hard to avoid, and I would suggest that in most cases most people would classify a photograph as being better without technical flaws.