Thanks for all the input folks! It really means a lot to me. One bit of advice I won't take (sorry!) is to add clouds. I've lived years in the midwest and hot summer Oklahoma skys (or any other state in that general area) has cloudless skies all too often. That's what I'm going for here...one of those bright late spring days, just before the summer really hits when there's not a cloud in the sky. Bees are humming, the little birds are harassing the big birds to leave their nesting areas alone, flowers are blooming and, for once, all is right with the world. :o) Now, about that sky. What I was going for, trying to recreate, is that glare of the sun that you almost have to shade your eyes from. Hence, the lighter sky in the upper right. It's not that the sky isn't darker there, it's just that the sun is so close to the field of vision, the light washes out colors. That's my story and I'm sticking to it! :o) Thanks again folks. I've had to take a bit of a step back. Silly me, I didn't save the file when I got home from work and it had finished rendering. I did a bit of tweaking and while a bit of render was going, decided to switch to some other things. Normally not a problem but I'm doing a program beta test and the stupid thing locked everything up. So, I lost the last, oh, 4-6 hours of rendering. Oh well....c'est la vie (or however it's spelled!)