Hi Roger. I don't think it's a dud, and if YOU like it, it's definitely worth playing around with. I for one, would be interested in see the uncropped original, because it appears that you've ended up with the ferris wheel (which I assume is the main subject besides the sunset), very near the centre of the frame - which may, or may not be ideal, or intentional.
After that, there are a few other things you can do to pull out some colour from the sky, if you wish of course.
Roger, an amazing first attempt! This is a great image.
Not a dud at all, for a first attempt.. in fact to my mind you have achieve the most important part and that was preserving some detail in the highlights. There are lots of options in how you can improve the image either when taking the shot with a graduated filter or later in post processing, keep up the good work.
Not a dud at all, i personally would try to lose the detail in the buildings and trees whilst trying to keep the detail in the Ferris wheel, but im all talk and wouldnt have a clue how to do it other than using layers somehow but thats my target for this leave period, improve my photoshopping!
Too, Mark, Dave, Andrew and Andre, Thank you all for your comments, I was walking away from this and something made me turn round saw this and snapped, the camera was on auto iso 200 - f/5.0 - shutter 1/400. I cant get it into my head at the moment to change settings, and to be honest not sure what they all do in respect to how they change the image......I must read the tutorials on this site.
Can somebody suggest which part of the site too put a note saying how friendly everyone is on here.
Thanks
Roger
Rodger, start with the exposure triangle, which will tell you all you need to know about iso, aperture and shutter speed which are the values that you have given above, once you have a grip of how they effect each other then move on to the secondary effects of altering each one.
once you have that understood youll be well on the way to understanding how the values will effect your results.