Hello 
Thank you for taking time to look at this. I’m working through the “Noob to Pro” tutorials. This is my first original creation.
And my inspiration: (I know the angles, positioning, and lighting are different but inspired none the less.)
I’m interested in your experienced insight. What/how would you improve if it was yours?
It looks pretty good, but I would try to improve the reflections/transparencies on the glass items. Also your wall texture looks kind of low-res. I like the flowers though 
(by the way, congrats on your first post!)
The modeling looks really good, peaveykat. The materials and lighting need some work.
The shadows are really harsh and dark. Notice in your reference, the ambient light removes almost all the shadows except those underneath the tray. You can do something similar by adding fill lights (low power hemi lights pointed opposite the main light)
The black areas on the glasses are probably caused by the Ray Transparency depth being too low, probably it’s set at 2, the default. Try increasing it to 3 or 4 to see the difference (it costs in render time, though.)
Since you’re already paying for Ray Transparency, you might as well toss in a bit of Ray Mirror, too. The table surface and the vase could stand to be a bit reflective.
Finally, I don’t particularly like your color choice for the tabletop, but that’s an artistic issue, not a technical one, so feel free to ignore it.
Welcome to BlenderArtists.
I really like the shadows. It’s almost as if the shadows were the focus of the picture, and not the flowers casting them… it looks very good, any way.
The vase/flower models look good. The candle and its holder are fine as well. The glasses and their tray are left in the dark, and I’m not sure what’s the strange miscolor in them. Did you try to model some liquid in them?
As an earlier poster said, texturing could be better, and some secondary lamps could help the overall look as well.
Nice modeling work, I especially love the flowers. But lighting and texturing spoil this image for me. The lighting is just way to harsh your reference photo has softer blurred shadows that are far more pleasing to the eye. Try either an area light or dupliverted spots to get some soft shadows into your render. A fill light to soften the shadow on the side of the vase will also help try, a rim light to add some depth and a bounce light to simulate some of the indirect light that will bounce of the table in general set up a four point lighting rig, there is some good documentation and tutorials in the blender wiki if you need some more information on lighting.
Thank you all for your replies. I really appreciate them.
dreblen, I definitely agree on the wall texturing being low-res. I’m not sure how I saw past that.
Orinoco, thanks for mentioning about the reflectiveness of the table and vase as well. I did want the shadows but I’m not sure they are liked now. I’ll have to get past my adoration of shadows. lol
I did not try to model liquid in the glasses. Not sure what that reflection is. I’ll have to work on it.
And tyrant monkey, FYI, the tutorial in blender wiki is what I am working through. It tells you to make this post in the tutorials at the end of the modeling section, right before it teaches you lighting. But it looks like that’s next.
Thanks everybody!!!
Nothing wrong with shadows. Just with overly harsh, unrealistic shadows. If you had a single light source in the room, you’d still get a bit of bounce light off the wall behind the table which would lighten up the shadows a bit. Since you do have that strong directional light source, keep the shadows. But… fix them up.
I would turn “Ambient Occlusion”. It would helpout the lighting and shadows. Have you learned about that yet? It’s under the world settings in the “Amb Occ” tab. Just press the button and default settings should be fine. If you turn up the samples the image will be less grainy. I assume your using a regular lamp? I would use an area light instead.
Keep working on it. It looks good for your first project.
Ray needs to be turned on the us Ambient Occlusion. It looks like you’re using ray shadows and ray transp though, so you should be fine