You might look at this using Jay Maisel's analytical trio...light, color, gesture. In a photo e.g., sometimes you could have all three, sometimes two, one...or none. Sometimes you can have a great image without all three. Sometimes light/color e.g. could become gesture etc. etc.. I've always found that it is a very useful tool generally speaking...something to keep in the back of your mind. You have great color, good light...is there another element..."gesture" perhaps? You have movement in the clouds maybe a little too faint to be gesture I think, so maybe that third element to consider is the black band of trees. An aside, "Crushing the blacks" causes an outline...is the outline you have interesting?...not really (unless the silhouette was breathtaking/spectacular...I would generally brings these up as was well suggested). The black band in the center is also reinforced by the very dark edge at top/bottom of your frame. So you could look at it as you have beautiful color in sky and light (reflected in water). ..but I think the black areas become a sort of non-interesting gesture...working against the better aspects. As an exercise, you might crop off bottom quarter and little of darkest part on top...and pull up blacks/shadow...brighten sky and add contrast to it...and look at it. The magic is in the middle of the frame. /B
