Sunrise at Beaver Lake

Last weekend, Gram and I went to Beaver Lake at 7:00am to photograph/draw the sunrise. I took a lot of photos, but this was the only one that turned out acceptably. I have recently been thinking about my photos, not the composition, but just the quality in general. I feel that I jumped into the world of DSLRs a little to quickly and forgot to get the basics completely down. I know how to use aperture, shutter speed, and ISO settings, but I don't fully understand them or what the can really do for my photos if I get it down and use it to it's highest potential. I decided to do some research and I'm spending time learning the basics again. I've discovered subtle things that impact photos greatly. I knew that a lower aperture (higher f/stop) would create greater depth of field and a slower shutter speed requirement, but I never used it according to the scene. For example, when shooting stars, you don't need a great depth of field because to the human eye, it's all so far away that it seems two dimensional anyways. If I was shooting something like my last picture (the Cathedral), I would want a greater depth of field to really capture all of the details in the photo to make it feel like you're there. There are lots of other examples but I don't want to bog you down. Here is a photo that I took before fully understanding the basics. It's a pretty basic photo.