Waterfall in Germany

This is a nice effort, but there are a wide variety of things that collectively diminish its full potential.

Focus is odd for two reasons. 1) There is motion blur of the background trees and the foreground plant. 2) The focus point is too close, leaving theboulders on the left and the waterfall itself a bit soft. These two issues combine to create a situation where the only really excellent focus is on the leaves in the creek in the center bottom of the image. I am pretty sure that wasn't what you wanted to consider the primary subject of the image.

Exposure is difficult in this shot. Deep forest photography is hard because you are always dealing with extremes of brightness (sky) and darkness (underhanging cliffs). In this case you have a few too many pure black areas. On the right and left there are large expanses without detail. You can do this, but not so much as you have here. Also, the water is too dingy gray. It should be brighter. Can you burn that in a bit? We try all sorts of stuff to deal with this high dynamic range...things like traditional HDR, HDR compositing, and even strobes. In this situation, the only one that would have worked well would have been a flash, but that would have introduced yet another color temperature into the image...and while I am on color temps...

The orange color temps brought in by what appears to be late day or early morning sun are distracting. I understand how they could happen. The shaded areas are very blue while the areas where some of that magic-hour light filter through are orange. The fact that there is just a little bit on the left of the image that has this light makes it looks like an accident. It makes me wonder how it happened. It's jarring.

Now I have thoroughly bashed your image, let me walk it back a bit. You have a composition with good potential. You have been vexed by technical issues. Most people get the opposite...they master the technical but never find a worthy subject. Waterfalls are a bit cliched, but doing them well is hard. If you can go back and reshoot, I think it would be worth the effort. Try a strobe, try moving the focus point further into the image. If this wasn't shot from a tripod, take one and use a slower aperture and shutter speed to get more depth of field. Hope for a still day. You have some sun filtering into the woods on this day. Hope for an overcast or even rainy day. Many people who shoot water like overcast days because the textures come through better and the lighting is more even.

good luck. you have a good eye.