Went looking for references for this month's challenge and came across this. Thought it looked nice and romantic, so I decided to go for it. But, I didn't want to copy it. I wanted to capture the mood of it.

And this is what I have so far. What do you guys think? Did I get close? Anything missing that would help the mood? Any suggestions welcomed! Mike

This looks good. My only suggestion would be to try and get some of that fantastic sky reflecting in the sea. The water looks a bit dull for this scene.

Great start....IMHO, you've divided the scene in half, try for more sky or more land, personally I think the sky is more romantic than the land so I'd move the mtn to the right by 1/2 giving the sky 2/3 of the image..., some surf against the inner rocks would be good to show motion, and the sky reflection would be sun path up to the rocks in forground, with sun color and green sea color mixed in the surf.... I apologize for taking the liberty in showing you on your post....

I agree--the sky is fantastic. A more reflective water would pick it up a bit.

Aye, I agree with what's been said, and hope you would add some more water and some spray, or foam? It's easily faked with terrains and an appropriate foggy texture... Another cool thing to try would be a large volumetrics cloud sphere with a radial light with a gel on it inside the sphere. It can produce awesome, totally unforeseen cloud types and gives you a lot more control than the Skylab clouds, which you can also leave on! If you set the volumetric material to "Sky Integration" and your spherical cloud base will take on your sky's coloring, it's very cool!

Wow jaw drop great start!

It does look good. Why not try using a procedural texture in the atmosphere lab or even a picture, to give a more turbulent, cloudy, sky, More like the reference. Catlin