Lielupa River

A circular polarizer here would have helped this image tremendously. Depending on where the sun was, it would darken the blue skies and remove or lessen the reflections in the water to reveal detail underwater.

Hi Scott,

thank you very much for your expert advice & critique.

I see your point but I beg to disagree - again! - with your opinion. 

When I would have executed the image in the ways you propose, it would have resulted in one with more saturated colours & other hues.

During some discussions with american photographers, & after having been in the States from north to south, I realised that most of them do not realise that they live in a region where there's so much more light, & thus vivid colours, than in northwestern Europe.

New York, at 42 degrees N, is at about the latitude of Madrid, 40 degrees N, in southern Europe. The rest of the US of A lies south of that, at latitudes of the Sahara, not only known for its dryness but also its abundant bright light.

The picture we're discussing now was taken at 57 degrees N. That's a region with much less light than where you live. Consequently, landscape images of those regions might look rather bleak in american eyes & thus, when you would ask them, have to be jazzed up to, say, 'technicolour us-style' (in my european view) in order to be recognised as real & maybe even beautiful.

The picture, as I have put it up here, resembles exactly what I saw.

No bright blue sky; a reflective water surface - no deep water to be looked into because the light rays bounce back at another, lower, angle than they would have done in a pond on an american property.

Oh well, no worries, it's a picture only, but differences of opinion about it exist.

Thanks again for the trouble you've taken.

cheers

Sam