Thank you for the comments! I realize the barren look of the landscape in the background, it may be attributable in part to scale. The dark dots you see are actual bushes, there are hundreds of thousands. I did not place trees in the distance, but if I did they would be hardly discernible as separate objects.
The clouds did take a while to set up, I have come to realize that if you bring clouds into the picture it's often a complex setup - multiple layers - to appear interesting and realistic.
