I am going for photorealism on this one, as you can see, I’m a really… really… really long way away. So plz gimme C&C, especially stuff to help me make it look more real.
p.s. reflections are raytraced Internal
Personally I think you should only try and get photorealism once you’ve mastered making nice “CG” looking scenes, as being able to make truly photoreal scenes suggests a mastery of the art.
Some crits for your scene (please resubmit a larger pic though, this one is too small to see detail.)
The proportions of the chair look all wrong, the legs too tall, and the back too small. Try roughly measuring a chair, and match those proportions in blender if you’re having trouble.
The whole scene is too dark, and there needs to be more elements in the room, it’s a bit empty at the moment, the main focus is simply a chair. It’d be better with a different camera angle imo as well, you’re on top of the chair.
Yeah, I just want to see how close I can get to a real picture. I think the legs of the chair difference is actually the extreme angle, I’m not sure though, I can try chaning the proportions, as for a higher camera angle, if I do that, you wn’t be able to see the reflection of the lamp in the mirror.
Larger Picture:
In case you want the light halo reflected you’re going to have to use env. maps which is found in the material buttons.
And work on the chair a little.
So do I add a halo or a lense flare on the material that I have for the light bulb, right now its just a light yellow material w/ stucci texture and alpha at .4 and emit set to .5. Can you add an envmap over a raytraced reflection?
an env. map is a material option, so in theory you should be able to use it and raytracing
You have a fantastic lack of details in the render, and due to this miserable fact it will be indeed hard to achieve photorealistic results with the current scene. I would remodel the chair, add more details, improve the lighting, and only then “hunt” for the photorealistic look.
-Antiggo
Ok, so I have given up on any delusions of photorealism I had. 
I really wasn’t very happy with the chair anyway, so here is the new chair version, plus I added a door in the background. I’m going to try and map a cracking pattern onto the mirror like someone hit it with the chair. The light is poor, because I really only want you to be able to see the chair, door and mirror. Also For some reason the halo I have on the light won’t map onto the one way glass
Well, I think I’ve takin this picture as far as I can take it. If anyone else has any suggestions on how to make it look better, im “all ears.”
places for detail::-=
have the back of chaire attach at bottom of seat
and something at the top of each of the legs witch they would “slot into”
or extrar bit on top of legs with screws going into seat through it