Thanks Michael, I really appreciate your thoughts
The vertical composition is probably a personal thing indeed, but you're right in your observation that the vast majority of the shots out there is in landscape format.
Perhaps you could see it as "trying to do things different", but I'm not really that type of guy, only occassionaly.
At the moment, during all those countless test renders, I'm watching Photography courses by Art Wolfe and Fran Lanting (from CreativeLive) and I guess if they would look at this composition then they would very likely ask:
Ok, looks nice, but what's the subject? what's all that empty sky doing there?
Still lots to do, indeed.
In the mean time, here's a newer version where I tried to add some morning mist. It's too dense and too close to the camera.