I just posed my first work (that I felt good enough to share)... please lemme know what you think. Critiques are welcome.

I really like this! You did a great job on the water. The front of the boat (bow? sp) looks a little high for the water it's in. The dark clouds and lighthouse in the distance give it a really nice feel.

Thanks!, I tried dropping it but then the stern popped out too much... guess that's the way the water... umm... waves. :c)

1. the boat needs to be textured - more detail. 2) get closer to the boat(or get the boat closer to the camera.) 3) boat needs to be lower in the water(as per jmahoney), and needs to follow the wave(aft lower and to port.) 4)texture the land. otherwise pretty good. keep trying you'r real close. hope you find my criticism helpful. waves can be a problem but you can edit their offset in the editor, i think. - o.k. BYE

Great image for the first post! Keep it up, your doing good. I like the detail of the small lighthouse - gives the image deph. Take care, Jimi

Beautiful for a first one up. It took me a few minutes looking at it, and then it struck me. For the perspective and distance you're trying to portray, I would work with the texture size of the water. The large texture size makes the ship look closer, but it's size says it's fairly distant. Try different sizes and twists on the texture(mainly just the bump height), but remember to save the the original one into a safe folder. Good Luck, Hope this helps.

Very nice picture for your first post, the water came out great...Sharen

Nice job for your first post, M. I posted my first acceptable work (acceptable to myself) and got a lot of good feedback on it. I know what you are saying about trying to lower the boat and having the bow and haveing the stern pop up. If you can and/or want to, try and manupulate the wave just a little bit so the boat isn't on the crest or make it going over the crest of the wave more. The sails are full and the boat is moving, right? Don't know if you are done with this scene yet, but you can add breaking water to the bow of the boat. You can do this in Photoshop, or try using a symmetrical lattice to shape it. With the clouds in the distance, bump up the fuzzy factor to blur them a tad and give it perspective.

Because I like to blow $%&# up.

Don't fear the night.  Fear what hunts at night.

I don't have much else to add to what's already been posted. This is a good start it just needs some minor tweaking here and there for the details. A minor adjustment to the placement of the boat along with a bow wake, putting the more distant clouds into perspective, etc. Keep up the good work. Oh and defintiely try to texture the boat a bit more.

The idea of a wake is interesting. how would you do that ? post render in photoshop or create a cone (boolean) object ?

I've been getting some ideas on how to render a wake in another picture I've been working on. I have another picture using the same boat durring a storm. I'm currently trying to figure out how to do sea spray, whitecaps and breakers without using post production. Lots of volume ovals so far, but haddn't thought of cones till now. This could get interesting. (as for the lack of texture on the boat, I realized after I posted that none of the textures had been installed for the boat.... oops... my bad :c) )

Well if you had metaballs, that migh be a good way to do it. It's what I used for the wave in my "Seadragon" render. Otherwise the cone sounds like a good idea.

Great image! And a great start! Play with the sky as well those low clouds are great but they look out of place with that near stock background.Take your time with some of the other suggestions as well.Interestingly enough I just finished an image with that same boat. Would you care to see my interpretation?