Worldwide Photo Walk favorite

I promised to write about the Worldwide Photo Walk experience this year, and the whole week did not get to it. For me, this year more then before it was a social event. We had quite an interesting group of people, with quite a few with freshly bought cameras. There were also two people I knew in the group, and it was nice to spend some time talking with them. Especially Bruce, whom I see only during photo walk, although we exchange occasional e-mails.
I was also vary of my camera. I wrote sometime ago about the multitude of spots on the St Louis weekend photos. The problem was persistant and non-lens specific. My D300 and a lens are now at the Nikon shop somewhere in Chicago. I was left with luckily second zoom, I recently bought Sigma 18-250 mm. But I had to take my old D40x for the walk. I did some shots beforehand, to learn again how to work with the camera. But there were still some issues with focus, and I didn’t dare to raise ISO above 800. It affected what I was able to shoot in the woods in the afternoon light slightly.
The bottom line is, when it came to picking up the favorite image from the walk- I just couldn’t force myself to do it. There was just nothing exciting on the card. There were a few I thought have a potential, but nothing I felt unique to eneter into contest. I eventually settled on this one. The color image, although filled with beautiful fall colors, just did not work. It is a calm, evening outing on the lake. The multitude of colors was just taking away from the mood, instead of adding to it. I put a lot of Clarity on the clouds, to bring up their structure and add some nature drama to the image.