Curious as to what you all think..I know art is the product of the artist but when you have a sunrise that cast shadows and you have an object in those shadows, that can be seen but darker, do you light the object or go with what would really be seen if you were there? I think I said all that right...

Well you need to decide what type of shadows you want...9 out of 10 times,If you are in a Forest and with tree's very close and the Moon is at the horizon you are not going to see to much...But if the Moon is higher in the sky then yes you will see the Backside/Shadowed side but with the object shaded a lighter color...

Depends on what effect you want. If you just want silhouette go with a more "natural" lighting. If you want to see the object use a fill light. This is even true in real life photography. There are times that photographers will actually use a reflector or fill light if they want to see a subject with the sunrise/sunset behind them.

I tend to try for realism, but within that you need to consider the ambient lighting, for example in foleypro's example, a full moon that is well overhead creates a lot of ambient light. I tend to use the same concept ignoring which application I'm using which is to use a directional light as the main light source ( in bryce this may be the sun or moon, but not always!) I then use groups of omni directional fill lights, set at low level and with cast shadows turned off to create the right ambient feeling. As I said it's a concept you can carry between all the different applications you use. Sometimes I may use a group of omni's in place of the directional light, I find the Zenith freeby useful for this sometimes in bryce.

In my opinion you dont need to spoil a good looking object by not adding a proper lightsource. A lightsource can come from so many different things so you can never actually tell if its realistic or not if you cant see where the light emancipates from. Reality isnt a static condition, so let your creativity flow.

Thank you everybody...One more beer and I'll light up the world..

Not a "light" beer, I hope! :^)

I would use a very low level fill light to replicate the ambient. Enough to let you see a bit of the detail but not enough to trigger the "that's not right" feeling.