Illustrating the Hobbit: decision time

Los elfos habían traído faroles brillantes a la orilla y cantaron 
the elves had brought bright lanterns to the shore, and they sang

That's the sentence I had underlined during the reading and - having been in love for some years with japanese and chinese lanterns of all kinds - the image that immediately came to mind was a quiet shore full of lanterns floating on the water, lighting a bit the dark evening forest. That's one of the 3 reasons why I chose to take this scene to the next level instead of others that happen sooner in the story, but not the only one, other reasons to choose it have been that there're no characters that need to be recognizable and it's up high among the top six images that hit me hard when reading the book.

After deciding to take on this one I returned to the book and reread the whole page to be sure of all the details, somehow the image that my mind created was not true to the scene described by Tolkien, reading the description before that sentence it states that the river "was flowing fast and noisily, as mountain streams do of a summer evenings when sun has been all day on the snow far up above" also "there was only a narrow bridge of stone without a parapet" and only after that "the elves had brought bright lanterns to the shore, and they sang a merry song" which means that my first vision of the image won't work, I've tried to revamp it without harming my main idea too much which was making the lanterns the main character:

- Off with the zoomed in lanterns quietly floating near the shore, since the river is running "fast and noisily" I've tried 2 approaches: a huuuuuge river wide enough to portrait running water that seems quite quiet, or a stream with jumps and more obvious flowing water. Both options makes me zoom out.
- Zooming out means that I'll have to add the bridge.
- Zooming out also means the close up on the lanterns is not an option, making them the main star will have to be done by the light effect on the river and shore rather than by the detail on them, also off with the idea of having them floating on the water unless I want them all over the place instead of close to the shore and/or bridge, the stream would carry them away, right? I've decided not to compromise on making the lanterns the main character so I'll have them floating over the water, why? why not.

I though the huge river would be better at first but now I think the running waters with falls will have more interest and also will let me have the bridge and lanterns a bit closer to the viewer.

And between the running streams I'm going to go for this one because I want to move the angle of the bridge and I like how it has more interest and depth, even if I like the water itself better on another one, but the scene will be in the late evening and the river and woods are going to be supporting characters.

These are some of the roughs that didn't make the cut:

I'm going to try to turn the cons of this illo into pros, so far:
-I'm into close ups, opening the scope feels weird, but the scene being at the end of the day gives me the chance to still tone everything down except for the area with the lanterns.
-Landscapes, big fat nemesis of mine, I hear my brains going eeeeeek! But on second thoughts it's mainly a river instead of foliage and land, I can do water, it's going to be fine...

What do you think, does my approach make sense? Will that work? I do hope so.