Results always dissapointing

[soto97]

Some thoughts for the next time that you are taking a similar photo: for this photo, I would have tried moving towards the left to look down along the boat. Then, I would have turn the camera ninety degrees in order to include the mask. I might have ended up with a photo that included the ship from bow to stern and from water line to the top of the mast. Maybe some interesting lines and colors would have popped up by doing so.

Would the photo have been better than what you took? Who knows. As others of said, try taking a lot of pictures. Especially, try taking a lot of pictures from different angles and from different distances. Include the whole boat. Zoom in on a portion of the boat. Barely show the boat. I believe the old rule of thumb was one good photo out of a roll of 36; I still use the rule, even with digital.

Finally, if you are not using a polarizing filter (and it looks like you aren't) I would really try one. For the kind of day that you were shooting, a polarizing filter would have really highlighted the background clouds and maybe removed some of the glare in the image. Once I discovered polarizers, I have not gone back.

[jsanders]

Thanks for your reaction. I think my problem was also that it was very busy. There were a lot of people around all trying to get a nice shot of this ship. Therefore I couldn't really take the time to take a nice picture, from various angles.
I also tried to take one or two detail photo's but these also didn't come out well. Maybe I should crop these as well to get the best out of it. Because by this photo i didn't aim to take anything of the boat particullary in detail.
I'm still wondering why I didn't get the whole boat on the picture. I think I have used the right gear (Nikon D80 with Tamron 17-50, 2.8)
By the way, I think that I have a filter on my lens, but it's probably an UV filter.