sun and moon setting shots

first one shot with the nikon D300,handheld,cropped only.
http://i293.photobucket.com/albums/m...DSC_0646aa.jpg
this one is the same,hand held and completely untouched,straight from the camera.
http://i293.photobucket.com/albums/m...s/DSC_0696.jpg
of course any critism for this nikon D300 is welcome. first night shots ever taken with this one week old camera.

Great colors in both of these pics. But my feeling towards both are the same. The dark spaces on both, top being on bottom right, and bottom being on bottom left, are distraction for me. The moon seems to be only slightly off center vertically, my eye wants to bring it to the center because it is so close. Cropping out some for the left hand side of that photo may help. Great attempts though.

I think the moon shot is miraculous. Sunsets are sunsets, but this is better than average.

well, pretty colors, but the shots don't quite talk to me.

I do like the moon shot, for as Don stated, it's a rare look (it seems like it's drunk, and is spilling itself all over the water !!!!). There seems to be an uncalculated amount of negative space in the shots, not really adding too much to the scenes. The title/angle of the foreground on the bottom shot throws me a little, for even though I know it was simply taken at an angle, it just seems like a mistake no matter how many times I view it. Someone once told me that if you're going to do something that's off or odd, make sure it's very much so; otherwise, it will look like a mistake, even if it is not (the challenge could hence be to move right up to the edge of that, just staying on the intended side :) ).

They could also be sharper, but these are decent considering that you had to (?) handhold the camera.

actually the moon setting shot was on a tripod exposure set for 5 seconds,.

Hey polar, I like the first one though it's a tad soft.

thanks guys for looking,perhaps my exposure compensation was alittle too strong on the sunset,but viewing the moon set on the camera was just amazing,thats why i never changed anything, i'm getting that one blown up,will see how it looks bigger.