This is a picture I made for my art class, this is my first real scene where lightning is a major factor, tell me what you think!
C&C please!
the table is levitating. the light in the upper right-hand corner area totally oversaturates the image, which does not happen in real life or the bulb guy would be fired. The sconces are not putting out enough light. keep goin’ man!
Aside from that, I’d buy that table in the sims. For someone. I’m sure. 
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One basic premise of photography is that the eye always goes like-a-magnet to the brightest thing in the frame. And what is that? Right. The back wall. Which is not your intended subject.
The “3D illusion” is created most of all by shadows, and at this moment your model has none to speak of. Thus the table “floats.”
The eye looks to specular highlights to judge the surface quality of things: matte or shiny, smooth or bumpy, and so on. Although there is a slight hint of that, it’s not yet sufficiently developed.
I suggest that you take the picture into Photoshop or Gimp and look at the histogram tool, which shows you the distribution of bright-to-dark. A well-exposed image will present a roughly bell-shaped curve centered on the middle. Various other characteristics … overexposed, underexposed, no-details-in-shadow, blown-out-whites … can be expressed in an objective and quantifiable way through studying the shape of the histogram. A great deal of material from classical studio photography, such as Ansel Adams’ famous “Zone System,” is very applicable to this medium. It is helpful to study how the eye sees color and contrast, and how both reflected-light media (paper) and emitted-light media (screens) present it. The Internet is your university.
I don’t know much about light, but the shadow on the floor looks like the table has straight edges, like it is on set solid. Not sure if thats what you wanted but subsurf or set smooth might fix it
Here’s the update!
I thought that the space bitween the lamps was so empty, so for fun I made a paintning that doesn’t fit in with the theme, just for fun:evilgrin:
Its Suzanne with some stick through here head and she’s starting to melt:spin:
Although I think the painting looks kinda cool:)
Oh and I was thinking about adding another ornament to the table, something made of glass or metall, any ideas?
Last version is super!
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Here’s some things you might consider trying:
- Ambient Occlusion
- using a large area-light to light the table from above and one smaller from the side
- reducing the wall’s specularity to zero
- adding some texture to the floor
- making the painting in the background less saturated
Vivid: you have a glass tabletop resting on metal legs. Until you can get the shadow under the table to look like it’s cast by what’s above it, the suzanne pic on the wall, the sconces, the table ornaments are not going to improve the scene. This major, major, major problem is in the middle of your scene, and is the focus of your scene. The table legs must cast a shadow on the floor. So should the ashtray. Unless you want the light to be so diffuse that nothing casts shadows, in which case the table top should not either.