For what itās worth, when I look at this picture, I definitely take the scene as "this is real." Itās very convincing. But I do see a couple of fundamental lighting/exposure problems, which I would describe equally for a CG image or a photograph:
[ul]
[li] The eye is always drawn, like a magnet, to the brightest and/or the most contrasty part of the picture. Which in your case is, unfortunately, the lights at the top of the frame. Zi-i-i-ip! My eye just shot āup and out ofā the picture. Whups. (My eye also pauses at the shape below the horseās neck, then goes straight up the āpipeā to hit the poor horse. Whack! [*] The body of the horse, despite āall that light,ā is murky and underexposed. The side of the horse actually drops all the way to āfeatureless black.ā Serious boner. The ghost of Ansel Adams would rise up and lecture you.
But itās also rather implausible: the horse is directly below āall those lightsā and certainly would receive sufficient illumination. [/ul]
[/li]
Also⦠if I were shooting this scene with my trusty 4x5 camera, I would probably have a couple of soft-cloth reflectors casting light into the shadow areas just to bring the tonal range back within the parameters of the film Iām using. Iād be all over the carousel with my incident-light meter, muttering to myself, āThis will be zone-5, this needs to be no less than zone-3, and this highlight no more than zone-7ā¦ā And if I canāt compress it quite that far in the field, Iām going to be making notes for the darkroom.
And then, all things considered, I just might recompose the shot. For example, what if you panned the camera to the left so that you cropped-away the very bright (burned out) light patch at two oāclock? (Put your right hand over the image and have a looky.) Isnāt that a much better shot?