Simplicity

I rendered this in 16 minutes at 2K.... but before that, I pre-rendered the sky in a couple of hours as a 4K EXR panorama, and used it as a skydome for IBL in this scene. For waterscapes like this, where you see a significant part of the ocean horizon, environment mapping can work really well, since the horizon is a lot clearer, and it makes the image more realistic.... and of course, it's way faster to render. :)
The scene was built and rendered in VUE (including the entire sky), the only thing I painted in Photoshop is that slight lens flare, I enhanced the Sun's reflection, and also did some really minor color grading. But since I really liked the control I had over the EXR environment map, I barely had to do any color grading.
I got the wooden log from Quixel Megascans... their library is insane!
Inspired by some similar photos.
Theme: Waterscapes - http://www.dreahorvath.eu/waterscapes/