Seattle Cityscape at Night (Looking for Feedback)

[Frenchman]

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16 seconds at f/8, ISO 200 (Aperture priority). This is part of my very first set of night/long exposure pictures. I would love to get feedback and tips to take better pictures or to process them better. For example, would the city lights have been a bit crisper at a higher ISO and therefore shorter exposure (I wish I had tried!)? Or would that have helped getting less of that yellow in the clouds on the left? I think some of that yellow comes from the sodium lights in the park I was at; I'll go back some other time and look for a darker spot.

This is a JPEG OOC (I have the RAW too) with auto exposure and colors in Aperture. I appreciate tips on processing and will be happy to post a RAW if some good soul wants to teach me something here!

Edit: the picture below is the straight OOC JPEG for color comparison.

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[Mikey]

Quite nicely done! Your PP work did a nice job of lessening the yellow tinge of the buildings from the sodium vapor lights. Have you tried applying an ND gradient in LR to darken the exposure of the sky and maybe decrease contrast as well? With your permission, I'd gladly download the file and see what I can come up with.

 

[Frenchman]

No, I have not tried a gradient in LR. I do have LR but am trying to pick between Aperture and LR and right now I am learning Aperture first (even though basic unforgivable bugs like not being able to reorder projects drive me crazy, I like its full screen UI on my small 13" screen better, and like the bricks concept for now).

The RAW file can be found here.