Originally posted by MSL The cropped version has a lot going for it. As to the original photo, I think you would have done better by crouching down and shooting from a lower position, rather than from a standing position aiming downward.
Brooke's simple crop definitely made the image more focused. While I can understand the concept of lower perspective as something different, the lower perspective also changes your effective depth of field. I almost always shoot at a slight downward angle from a tripod because it increases my realized depth of field at any given aperture. shooting UP decreases your realized depth of field.
Neither way is right or wrong, depending on the effect you are after, but be aware of how sensor plane angle as related to your image can effect things like depth of field and perspective.
In terms of composition, your lines (stream) are nice and your exposure is very good. It's not a bad image, but the concept of focusing on your central theme (as demonstrated by the crop) is an important point. Way too many images have too much boring blue sky or other distracting backgrounds that do nothing for the central theme. In general, a tighter crop is better and less confusing to the viewer. Just like in film work, field of view control can be highly effective in still photography. It not easy though. It took me a few years to unlearn my tendency to include too much sky in my images, even sunset ones.
My final thought on the image would be to look for a foreground anchor. A rock, a log, reeds in the stream, something in the foreground in the large empty space in the bottom middle might have really enhanced the image. Because we read left to right our eyes scan photos the same way. What happens in this photo (cropped version) is that the tree trunks to the left catch our eye and so as we scan across the photo, we stay in the middle of the image (because of the ripples) and are drawn up slightly as we scan to the right edge. Only then do we come down and across the lower middle, so it feels like we have to work a little too hard to process the scene (our minds don't like backtracking). In the uncropped version, it's even tougher, because we don't know whether to go up or down, both edges have equal low impact (the semi colored sky and busy tree branches vs. the flowing stream). Something to garner attention in the lower middle would drawn the eye there immediately after the tree trunks and then we would naturally follow the line of the creek back to the log and over to the right edge. It would be more "natural" in feel, like a continuous movement.