A newbie's first steps - Desert Outcrop

[Emmeline]

Hi everyone. Given this is my first post - I guess I should introduce myself. My name is Kelly - but I go by Emmeline as a nickname and hence my name on the forums.
As the title suggests - while I've been tinkering with Terragen a bit - I'm still a horrid newbie at it - I barely know a Power Fractal from a heightmap! Well, that's not 100% true - but the talk on functions and other innards of the program on here makes my brain melt.
I've been lurking a tiny bit - and some of the images I've seen on here are simply magnificent. I hope to be able to make images even half as good as those ones, in the future.
Nonetheless, I wanted to show everyone in Planetsideville some of the stuff I've made. Hope you guys think its ok.
I have more images I've made on my DeviantArt folder (not all of them are Terragen though, but a good lot of my later ones are) - if anyone is interested to look its under my avatar on the URL section.
Thank you very much in advance for viewing my thread.

[Clay]

Welcome! And that looks pretty darn good to me, very nice work.

[yossam]

Welcome to the best forum on the net............all kinds of helpful people here. There are some that are a little off, I'm proud to be one of them. Nice outcrop, very good first post. If you have questions feel free to ask, someone will answer.


Again, welcome. 

[Emmeline]

Thank you guys for the welcome!
I'll be looking forward to your 'offness' yossam! Haha.
You guys are very kind for the comments.

[Dune]

Good to have another Terragen-addict-to-be on board, so also a welcome from me. You seem to have gotten to grips with the software quite well already, very promising. Nice light, very well done.

[Emmeline]

Haha! Yes, I'm terribly addicted already. Thanks for the welcome!
To be honest though, a lot of the time I'm just adding random stuff to my projects without too much thought to it (but that's kinda bad ). I gotta figure out how to refine stuff, specifically how to place certain things in certain positions. Hopefully with more tinkering I'll get the hang of it!
The main issue is that I'm trying to make images that look as realistic as possible - and I'm not quite sure exactly how to go about it. I'm guessing a lot of it comes down to specific settings being 'just right' - even though I know there is no one answer for that question of "How do I make my images look like a photograph?"

[mhaze]

Welcome and what a fantastic start.  Super image, great light and clouds and I love the rock.

[kaedorg]

Welcome and very promising start.

David

[bobbystahr]

Welcome and stunning first post, great outcrop and fine lighting..photo real is the grail here...just keep plugging away and tweaking till you're blind...

[Cocateho]

I'm not sure how much I believe all that stuff about being a newbie with this image  at the very least I think you have a good eye for composition. In my opinion, a little practice with fake stones could "complete" this picture, particularly right in the foreground. It'd be a good one to learn on for that, but other than that this is a great image.

[DocCharly65]

Welcome 
.. and...
that's doesn't look like a render from a newbie at all! Great!

[Emmeline]

You guys are too kind! Truly - to hear from some greats that say my work isn't complete crap is really humbling.
Haha, the nigh-infinite treadmill of tweaking stuff - I know this so well. And blindly throwing up power fractals until you're wading through a mess of them.
Thank you, everyone.

[TheBadger]

Really good. I like the low strata the best.

[choronr]

Welcome to you and look forward to your future creations. TG3 and the workings of your left and right sides of your brain will figure out some great stuff.