I find it very difficult to use/express myself with Bryce. I can see what you were trying to do here, unfortunately I don't know how to acheive what I think you're after. Bryce takes a lot of experimentation and practice, time which I don't have lol.

I've been working a lot with bryce again lately, and discovered quite a few new tools and settings that I didn't even know were there, so expect to see some more, better bryce stuff in the near future. I'm almost finish with a pretty detailed one that I call "pink lagoon" with mountains and trees and water plants...looks like something out of ireland, but the title may change before I get it posted. :)

Well, suggestions I can offer then, from my little experience with terrains and landscapes. You should use a duller, less green texture for the terrain, and increase the scaling so that it appears to be a higher resolution. I dont know how exactly to get the sky dark, but in all my work, I mostly use the basic sky and just mess with the position of the sun to get the brightness that I need. The water texture needs to be less prounounced, try using a water texture that relies mostly on reflection and bump maps to provide the texturing. One final thing I'd advise would be to use haze to your advantage. The haze controls in the Sky Lab can help alot with the terrain in the background. And the terrain itself...it could look cooler if it sloped to one side, maybe if it was taller on the right. You've given me an inspiration, do you mind if I draw something similar to this?