"Don't be to hard on me, but by all means be honest."

Can do..

First things first ... welcome to the site.

:o)

Back to your image here.

I like how you composed the various elements (placement of the one dominant tree, for example). There appears to be good good balance on the compositional notes.

And I also like the added clouds (grey'ish ones), with respect to the atmospheric element of the sky. Works well with the perceived time of day. Brings to mind that of some low laying, early morning fog to an extent.


Caveats?

Bearing in mind that I am viewing this on a CRT monitor ... might have been tempted to lighten things a tad. To bring out some more detail in the landscape itself.

Nothing drastic, just some additional lighting and/or lightening in post processing.

That said..

Seems readily apparent to these eyes, that you took some time in creating this piece. Attention paid to detail, in short (reflections, wave size, et al).

Nice work.

Looking forward to seeing more from you. And hopefully, as I am not familiar with the software/program you used ... others may have some more insight and tips for you.

Thanks for sharing this one with us. :o)

Enjoy your stay. :o)

I'm always glad to see someone trying computer work here! We're outnumbered ...

I was going to say, before I saw Les's comment, it is a bit dark overall. I notice the sun appears to be still shining on the mountain in the back. Maybe if that were emphasized more, by moving the camera so we see a little more of it, and making it a bit brighter? Probably something to be done in the program rather than postwork (don't ask me though - I'm still rather baffled by the sun controls in Vue!). Just a suggestion.

I particularly like the water and reflection, where you can't quite tell if it's the reflection or the bottom - very realistic!

Great first start, you def. have some good composition techniques down IMO. Nice texture work as well. Watch your scaleing though, the tree seems to be edging on the big side for this pic.

Again atmosphere in Vue is everything, if you like the size of the tree for example maybe bump up the Aerial Perspective, don't be afraid to hit numbers over the default (like 20).

Also if you are going for a objectless terrain then make the terrain large, don't stick to default size, the light works better on larger terrain.

Check out geekatplay.com for awesome and fun tutorials as well as Dax Phandi.

For your first one.......I think it's great. I would like to see what your work looks like as you play with this more. It's facinating to me because I have never used these kinds of programs =) I have came across some computer artwork on here that is amazing. I haven't seen many nature scenes like this one. It's neat how realistic they appear. Good job on this!