How can one achieve realistic lighting and shadows for an outdoor scene using blender’s cycles renderer, when trying to replicate the look of natural sunlight and soft shadows? Any recommended settings please?
A nice HDRI (properly exposed) or the Nishita sky texture will do the job well.
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Also interesting (even if a bit old) :
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HDRI solves a lot of problems, but it’s not perfect.
You may need a little trick. 
This artist has a few backplates and high quality HDRI avaible for free. You will need to setup a camera with proper scale, you can use fSpy or a tracking software, and a simple shadow catcher setup.
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