"Riverscape"

I'm new here, but not used to how the forums are set up. I'm more used to the ProBoards and IF kind. I was invited here because I wasn't finding much help elsewhere.

Anyway, here's the story behind the picture. I had gone fishing with my cousin to a pond, and thought this was a pretty good shot. It was around 4 or 5, but it was obviously starting to get dark in that particular area so wanted to snap some photographs while I could. I like this one the best of all the pictures I had taken that day just because of the vibrant colors that I'm getting. I don't like how it's so blurry but that's mainly because I forgot to focus on a particular subject before composing the shot. I'm sure had I focused on the trees I would've at least to some amount removed the blur.

My first thought is there really isn't a subject.  It's a really cool location with great colors, but needs a focal point.  I've got a thing for shots of paths going off into the woods and took dozens of them before I inadvertently took one with a person in it.  The one with the person is still one of my favorite shots ever. Maybe you could have talked your cousin into taking the boat along the shore and go through the motions of fishing to give the viewer something to lock on to. 

And not really related to this image, but feel free to attach your images to your post rather than linking to Imageshack.  If they're attached our forum software can pull out the EXIF metadata and tell us a little more about the image. 

Oh yeah, and 

Hello, guys, thank you for the polite criticism and helpful tips, which I've followed to the best of my understanding. =)

1 - I sharpened the image, I think it did automatically. I liked how it erased the blur I was able to see in the full view. I wasn't exactly loving the sharpen thing before, as I couldn't understand how to work it with all that numbers and "Radius", "Threshold", etc. As for the kind of blur, it was mostly out-of-focus blur. I was just snapping as many photos as I could because it was almost time for us to leave.

2 - I adjusted the contrast just like you suggest, Mr. Edens. Moved the left and middle cursors to the left, did some re-adjusting in the backward directions a couple of times until I got the look I liked. I didn't darken it any more than that mainly because if I did then it would be too dark to me.

3 - I couldn't find the filter options until I realized it was as "Photo Filters". But, when I found it, I used "Warming Filter (85), and it would only let me use the orange hue for it. I put the density at 60%, though, and it still has a nice look.

4 - When I looked at the image through the camera, it didn't appear blurry until I had uploaded it to the PC. But we weren't also using a boat, we were fishing from a bridge, and I just decided to hike around and see what I could find. Mostly just trees and water.

5 - I did the Shadows/Highlights, too. Kept the shadow cursor at 0 and raised the highlight one to 25%. Wasn't seeing much difference, though.

6 - Did the soft light, moved it to around maybe 10 to 20 percent. The picture at first came out to be too dark, and I couldn't see some of the trees in the foreground, so wanted to lower it to just about enough. =)

After following all your tips, and I did learn some interesting steps in PS along the way, I decided to try and add my favorite exposure setting to the photo, and it gave the photo a nice look. I also tried to check it out in B+W to see how it would look, but personally I think I like the color better! I've saved two copies of this particular photo, after the tips, but one with the exposure setting I put on and the other without. =) The one I'm attaching has the exposure setting.

Tried to attach, file was too big. After resizing, it said I had already posted but I don't see my post! So had to upload from ImageShack again. Hopefully I will be able to attach photos without a problem soon, =).



Edit: URL tags and IMG tags were conflicting, so removed URL tags.

After all those edits I like the original better, 

In the shadow/highlight menu don't mess with the highlight slider, that will darken your highlights (but not in a good way usually). At the bottom (you might have to click a button that shows more options) there will be a slider for midtone contrast, that's the one I meant for you to play with.
I also think you warmed the image up too much, you don't want to loose the pretty greens.