I finally finished my first scene. I wanted sort of an unreal element to the landscape, in the hopes it looks a little more fantasy-ish, hence the cloud formations and the terrain shape. Sure there are a few bits and pieces I can play around with until the cows come home, but I think it's more important to leave it and move onto my next piece. There is a touch of Photoshop in there.
One thing I'd like to mention is that the forest was created using the Fake Stones Shader. While I think it kind of falls apart the closer it gets to camera, which is expected, it does a great job in the distance of looking like a bunch of trees. And I probably saved a bunch of time taken to render in doing so.
Scene stats:
Detail: 0.75
AA: 8
Cloud and Atmosphere Samples: 64
(Athlon 64 3700+)
This scene weighed in at 4 hours to render, but I think that mainly has to do with turning on ray tracing in the atmosphere. Turning it off would not make a big difference to the image, though would have probably saved a half the time (but I was rendering it overnight, so the extra time didn't matter to me).
Enjoy!