A nice piece. Lighting can be a real pain to get right. Try turning off the sun in the sky lab and using the basics lights to do the scene. They take a while to place but results are worth it.

Yep, look at you! Your getting that whole Bryce thing down to a cakewalk. :) Light IS tough sometimes. But a little trick you might try sometime when using a torch or other flame based light source is to match the color of the light to the flame object itself, as close as possible.. (looks like you might have a bit of Clays volumetric fire going on there which needs a real reddish orange light)and by doing that you add the orange atmosphere the eye expects to see when there is a flame. As for the moon, I usually let nature handle that one by boosting the intesity of the moon itself and adjusting its postition in the sky till the water catches it the way I want. But hey your certainly on the right track to fame and fortune :)Keep it up.

Thank you both for your suggestions and kind comments. You are right, DryFly, I forgot to mention Clay's fire. Sorry . I wasn't having much luck with the intensity setting for the moon. I need to go do some more tutorials and experiment with the things you both mentioned.

Your second?!? Wow. My compliments! :) The figures are original, and I like how you managed to reflect the moon on the water. As for the light: I'm one of those who turn "disable sun light" first thing in a pic :) so I agree with BBB: using the primitive lights you can really control almost everything you want (i.e. the little flatness you got here on the terrain mat). Plus, when the lightsource is a flame, the "squared" falloff instead of "linear" is way more realistic. Overall a very good job.

This is amazing for a second render. Looking at this pic I know you'll be even more awesome sooner than you think. On the light, perhaps a little tint of orange to counteract the greens. Anyways, I still like the composition and hope to see more of your work here. =)