Congratulations, I think you were the first artist I ever favorited, keep up the wonderful work

If it is looking too sparse remember that you can enter densities higher than 100%, you just have to put the number in the box instead of using the slider

Some of that is bound to be seasonal, a lot harder to sit in front of the computer during months with nicer weather.
You might try announcing themes 2-3 months in advance. It allows people to work ahead on them or spend more of their limited time getting an entry together.

Hi, welcome to Vue
Your Lone Tree image has a nice touch to it, good color use and composition. For the clouds there are things you can try to give them more depth. In the Atmosphere editor there is a Clouds tab that will give you controls to play with. Try increasing the clouds density. You can also alter the actual material the cloud is made from in the materials editor. Go to that clouds tab and then edit the material in the lower left. The type of atmosphere you have will effect the controls that are available in the atmo editor. There are loads of  subtle and not so subtle things you can do in there to create lighting and atmospheric effects for your images.

For .veg plants all of the makers who have been mentioned here are good. I have plants from all of them and have been very happy.
For static plants I have used mostly those form Lisa's Botanicals (via Daz) and RDNA sources.
I will often use plants from 4 or 5 or more makers in a single scene.
I've tried making my own and it's hard work, so I have a great respect for all of those who have specialized in this area.

awjay - "House in the Reeds" 3pts
Fractalinda - "Light of His Love" 2pts
MCW1917 - "Flowers" 1pt

I personally use Moment of Inspiration the most for modeling, but it has limitations. If you don't havce a modeling program yet I would recommend getting Hexagon. It's possible to get the full current version for $20 US right now. There is a book at Daz3D titled Figures Characters and Avatars The Official Guide to Using DAZ Studio to Create Beautiful Art , it has a CD in it with a bunch of software and items including the full version of Hexagon. It was way worth it just for the one program so I picked it up and am starting to learn to use Hex now. It can do some great stuff that MoI can't.

Done in Vue 7 Complete, only used post render adjustments done in the program, no postwork with other programs or media. Click image for the full size view.

He's done some great dinosaur work, very talented.

Yes I think AVANZ has it.
I played with this a bunch when I imported a mesh that insisted on casting pitch black shadows. So I duplicated the mesh, set the visible version to not cast shadows and made the second version Shadows Only. Worked fine. You may need to move your shadows only version slightly behind the jellyfish so it doesn't cast odd shadows on the fish itself.

I read it all (since we seem to be reporting on that point). I use Firefox at home and the spell checker is good - especially since it can be changed to different English dialects - there are Canadian, British, and Australian versions.
I see the forums here as a generally pleasant bonus worth skimming on the way to the ART. There are often some pretty good technical points being made, and it's a good place to go with a question, but it's still not the primary purpose.
Make the art, have fun doing it, share with the world. Repeat.

I just want to put a little emphasis on the 64bit for your operating system. There is a speed issue involved and also I believe that 32 bit has a limit on the amount of RAM or processers it can recognize. You doh't want to buy a lot of cool tool and then not be able to actually make use of it.

Yep, I've had this same problem Gill. I'm in Vista 64bit. mostly it's noise, sometimes it randomly picks up part of one of the other images in the folder I am saving to.

There are a lot of different types of road out there, so lots of potential answers to this. I suspect that one aspect of it isn't the road itself but what's on it. Even with fractals or noise you are still going to get a pretty similar surface over large flat areas. Real roads typically have a drip line - the darker part in the center where all the car's have dripped oil. There will be ruts , cracking, and pitting of some level at the wheel points and dust/dirt along the edges. Again how much and what kind is going to depend upon the type of road you are doing. I haven't attacked this myself, but think it may be possible to do all these things using procedural layers and the function editor. My suggestion is to pick a specific prototype and really look hard at it. Examine all the color and texture changes and how they may relate. That should give you some places to start, or specific questions you can ask.

7 opens more reliably for me and generally seems stable, I have had one scene with terrible  crash problems and a few other issues after going to 7.4 but that's a Beta so to be expected.