You'll get there! Let's take for example shot #1 with the wood in the foreground: the tough part is that in a river environment, there's no way to get CLOSE enough to make the wood large in the frame, unless you get in a boat and move closer to it, so the only solution from shore is to lengthen the focal length.
River and seascape type shots from shore are tricky. I think the challenge is translating human vision, and our human ability to mentally focus-in on details and subjects into camera vision. The camera sees things somewhat differently than we as people see things, so it's a process of trying different camera placement to change perspective, and also a matter of trying different lens focal lengths to change what is called apparent perspective; the two are different terms, and are different. What you have run up against in this instance is being LOCKED IN to one, particular camera placement, so the perspective can not be changed by moving the camera any closer.
Perspective is dependent on the camera-to-subject distance, and placement. There is no way to change perspective except to move the camera. Perspective is a specific word, with a specific meaning,and is a key photography term. Perspective does not change when the lens length is changed, but the apparent perspective (another photography vocabulary word) can be changed by using a different lens length. Because you cannot move the camera any closer to the things in the river zone, that's why I suggested a longer lens.
In situations where we can not easily change the camera-to-subject distance to change the perspective of the picture, we're left with working with what we CAN control, which is the apparent perspective, and that means using different lens lengths to get a variety of different apparent perspectives,or different "looks" to the image.
Your ostensible subject, the ice formations, or the old bridge footings, are being overshadowed by a large expanse of sky; the subject you wanted to focus in on was readily visible to your human eyes, but that subject does not stand out in camera vision to nearly the extent that is stands out to himan vision; the shorter lens lengths literally make things in the distance show up physically SMALL on the sensor; this is why short lens lengths are poor for showing detail and interest in things located at 30,40,50 meters from the camera. Short lens lengths EXAGGERATE the apparent or relative size of the close-up stuff, and INCREASE the feeling of distance by decreasing the physical size of objects beyond about 3 meters. A short lens length is actually directly at odds with your goals, in a physics type or lens-vision sense.