Taking a course where the assignment is to shoot the same scene in both landscape & portrait modes. This is something that I regularly try to do and is the reason that both of my camera bodies are equipped with L-brackets. I did this early last evening and preferred the horizontal, but here's the vertical - http://www.pbase.com/ed_k/image/75364269 - you tell me. To my eye, the vertical version has too much foreground (which takes up about 50% of the image space) which isn't very interesting. Tipping the camera up to reduce the foreground simply introduces more dark sky which is even less interesting - thus the preference for this horizontal. The better solution would have been to move closer to the near street light, dummy. Moving closer is usually a good thing to do regardless.
Nailed the exposure (4 seconds at f/14). How can you not if you pay attention to your histogram?