A good idea is to make the seafloor underwater (only your sand, not the stones ect.) in a very light color (nearly white sand!).
This lighten up the water a little and you get a much better (harder) contrast to other stones in the lake.
So you can see more details in the sea at the bottom which makes the final look much more interesting because of all the details.
Lake Tahoe 2019, the original scene
Same scene, with cutout to show up the light colored seafloor
Another good idea is to start your scene always with a clean sky (as you already did). I always do it this way, it renders faster while fidelling with the settings.
When you come closer to your final view and scene, add clouds and move them in a way that you receive a perfect positioned reflection of the sky in your lake.
Sometimes I added just the reflection of the sky which reflects in the lake as a seperate pass in my final composition to make it look better.
But when I do it, I do it always at last before final. The final touch so to say...
My Lake Tahoe scene above is a good example of it.
I placed the reflection of the white clouds just behind the mountain chain a little above them, to get a good contrast (light/dark) in the reflection of the lake.
But to receive this clean look I had to move the clouds in the original scene a little and rendered another pass just for this reflection.
STORMLORD
