It turned out really well. I like the star effect with the light.
The shadows look good as well.

TicK

(Viewed Full Screen) ☂

EXCELLENT night time capture. Perfect lighting.

That's a good Low lighter...R.

For a first attempt at night photography, Roland, you did an excellent job with it. I see practically no noise--an ever-present plague on low-light shots--the low foreground-to-high background composition pulls the viewer's eye into the image, it's well-focussed for a night photo, and the lighting and color provides a powerful contrast overall. The only editing I would have suggested would be to have initially included more on the far left when shooting the original... or less: experience shies away from including tiny slivers of shapes along the periphery, shapes that unfortunately draw the eye to them without actually revealing what they are. That tiny sliver of block wall over there really doesn't need to be there. That light, however, is seen in it's entirety, and is intriguing enough as a counterpoint to the rest of the image to be a good element to leave in. The challenge here is that the light is close to the photo's edge, is very close to that wall sliver, and the light's crepuscular rays continue on into the photo about twice the distance the light itself does. My recommendation would have been to leave in the light but clone out the wall. Yes, it is a manipulation but only a slight one (there's a few Caedesians here who regularly make large manips in their photo submissions and never admit to it, so I wouldn't worry about ethics). When I was attending college with a major in fine art, I would often use a projector to get my images properly on canvas that I would then manipulate to the extreme with color and other shapes (because I never did trust my "skill" at drawing), an activity of which some of my fellow art students would arrogantly claim to be cheating (you should have seen some of their drawings... can you say "unintentional Picasso-esque?"). I maintain that it's not always the purity of technique that's important but the result of your labors. Blah-de-blah-blah!!! Okay, Roland, now that I've put you and the others to sleep, the bottom line is that this is an excellent submission and one that doesn't belong in the "Lonely Images" file, testament only to the vastly reduced number of people visiting and commenting on this site nowadays. A couple years ago you would have had a dozen comments already, and not your fault that there isn't. Keep shooting and experimenting.

-Nik