Please critique this shot

I took this shot sunday morning before work, off the 4th street exit on the 110 south. I shot this in aV mode, ISO 800, off a 12-24 Tokina f4. Adjustments were:
click white balance
a bit of rotation to eliminate the tilt
some shadow/highlight adjustment on CS2
used the cooling filter off CS2

Thanks in advance, JOHN

I think this is a good example of twilight being better than most night shots.
Nice!

There seems to be a halo glow around the top part of the building. It's the same type of halo that is often produced by Photomatix. Was Photomatix used in the processing?

P.S. - as for your user name, please, Please, PLEASE do us a favor and do not post the obvious pic for the avatar image!

Nicely done. I particularly like the subtlety of the colors you've caught in the sky.

i would just crop it a little in from the left, i find that tree distracting to the eye

Thanks for the feedback, guys. This was my first time attempting a shot like this; I plan on going back again to try and get more angles, and hopefully get some light trails from passing cars.

In regards to PP, all was done in CS2. No photomatrix was used in the post-processing. I think the halo came from the shadow/highlight feature off CS2.

Robert_Lay wrote in post #6368972
I think this is a good example of twilight being better than most night shots.
Nice!

I must agree, Very nice.
Sam

i'm really diggin' this one. great shot! light trails would really top it off.

Nice - excellent comp in presenting three distinct thirds in the verticals

I feel that I'm about to step off the edge. Fix that and I'd think it's perfect. The light is great.

Thanks, guys! I don't think I did anything, other than setup the camera on the tripod, and press the shutter button. Good timing, I guess.

acchildress wrote in post #6382352
I feel that I'm about to step off the edge. Fix that and I'd think it's perfect. The light is great.

How would you improve? I see where you're coming from; what could I do to eliminate that feeling? thanks, JOHN

I quite like that aspect actually, because where you were standing is not completely obvious. Also, shots on flat ground tend to have far too much foreground, whereas this has a depth to it which just so happens to be quite red.

It's very evocative. The beautiful city above, with the mysterious red underglow beneath.

As for the halo thing, it's not too pronounced. What I like to do though, when using shadow/highlight is mask off the area I'm most interested in. Doing it on another layer lets you make a stack of corrections to different parts of the image, at different levels, and avoids the halo.

Can be a bit fiddly, but is much easier on almost solid colours like your sky.

Nicely done. I agree with Robert, twilight when done well are quite breathtaking