For the life of me, I can't figure out scene layout and lighting. I've bought books on lighting in the past, but mot of it still alludes me.

Falloffs, intensity, the difference between the effect of an area light, an omnidirectional light, a linear light...

The difference between raytraced shadows and shadow map based shadows...

Global illumination, HDR imaging...

Then of course, there's layouts. What's the scale? How do you define scale in an image? What about the backdrop? How does the atmosphere and the time of day come into place?

I think that if i figure out the concepts behind all these things, maybe I can fly off this plataeu that I've found myself grounded on for so long. I want to put things together, not just objects, but scenes. I want to put together little tiny bits of reality, one piece at a time. I want it to look damn good.
And I don't know what i'm doing wrong so far...