Night shots are tough to get in a single shot because you've got such light contrasts. You blow out the street lights like in your shots or the unlit areas are black. You might try bracketing the shot by taking a few pics at different speeds so you get decent exposures on all areas and then just photoshop them together.
Another old school technique for long exposures is the hold a bit of black card paper in front of the light for part of the exposure. I've only read about this technique, I haven't tried it, but I think it's best if there are limited light sources to worry about.
In the spirit of constructive criticism...
Regarding your pics, a general composition "rule" is to direct the eye to the focal point of your image. In the examples you provide, my eye wanders all over, nothing "anchors" the image. For example the foreground in the 1st and 3rd one are distracting and due to the brightness shout "look at me" so the rest of the shot is lost. Also the light on the left is distracting and highlights the power line. The 1st one also has part of the tree on the left. My eye is naturally drawn from the bright foreground up to the bright light and on to the pink sky. I don't focus on the park.
I think the most interesting part is the fountains with the multicoloured lights if you could make those the focal point of your image I think you'd be on to something. It's tough to suggest exactly what would work without knowning the layout of the park but, using shot 2 as a guide, if you can move further to camera right and a little lower down perhaps you could line up the fountains in a receeding line. Another option is just to go in tight on the right most fountain, shoot portait, and have it fill most of the lens. If you could recreate the setting to get the nice misty look of the fountain in shot 3 I think that would be great.
The thing I've always tried to remember is most pro photographers don't walk up to a site, take 3 pics and walk away. They take their time, study a site, look at different angles and take a heap of pictures. Some are test shots, some are what they expect will be keepers, and some they take to experiment.
There is a site called photosig.com where contributors will post their pics and others on the board will comment and critique their shots all in the spirit of creating better photos. You might want to check it out, I've gotten lots of good tips from it and been inspired by the work people post.
Thanks for posting your shots, I always like to think about shots like this, they make all of us better. I have said before I think we should start a thread where all the photo guys are free to critique each others work and ask for advice.
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