Attached Link: Don't mesh with time

I am working on this image for a wile now, but I’m still not satisfied. It's the first time I'll ask for help, so be kind with me. : ) I'm working on the lighting (more shadow's from the trees behind the camera) but it still missing something. Has anybody a suggestion?

Lighting is too even,try lighting with a couple of parallel lights 1 with a range setting.Turn the sun color to black.
Try and angle the charectures to give some depth.
Your hour glass does not have supports between top and bottom wood pieces,not sure if you made it that way or not.
It is looking real good so far.

I think part of the cause for the even lighting is that most of the light seems to come from dead behind the camera.

Tank you for the comments!

@Rayraz: You're right, it's to light for the forest where the scene is. I'll try to fix it with 2D trees behind the camera. The shadow the tree makes the scene a bit more realistic, unfortunate also more complex, and bryce crashes...
I'll try again and hold my fingers crossed. 

@Wildman2: I'll made the hourglass with supports, but it looks a lot better without them. : )
And how exactly would you place the parallel lights? I don't get that one.

Aim the parallel lights at the charactures 1 low enough to light the back part of the scene the 2 others ranged to the dragon and 1 ranged at the gal with the sword.

Oké, I will try that at home (now at school). This is what I did last night, I add some shadows from behind the camera (2d trees), 2 lights in the hourglass and 1 radial light in the sword. Because my bryce is on a labtop, the scene is to dark, tonight I'll fix that (with parallel lighting?). At least this lighting make the scene less dull.  Comments still welcome! : )

Another thing you might want to consider is switching on some atmosphere, maybe some ankle height fog?

Personally I'm not keen on the snakes texture - the head and body don't appear to match!

That does look lots better! What really makes the current lighting much nicer then the previous one however, is that there's moer sense of depth in the scene. The shapes of the snake especially come out better in this newer image due to some extra shadow casting.

It doesnt need to be a bad thing that there's darker areas in the image, it kinda helps to set the mood. Try lighting out some area's of attention while keeping others dark. More brightly lit parts are likely to grab the viewers attention, see if you can use that to your advantage :-)

Again, thanks for the tips.

I’ll worked a bit on the dinokonda texture,  maybe the head/body matches more now. Personal the frog don't work for me, but maybe that is just my lack of skills. I'll train that in some of my next images.
I worked also on the lights, this image is not brighten in an edit-program (The previous one was) but strait out of bryce (1 radial light in the pommel of the sword, 2 in the hourglass, sun low with 2 2Dtrees for the shadows to simulate the forest behind the camera).

My monitor isn't calibrated (laptop) so I have no idea how dark it will look on your screen. To dark, to light? At the crt-monitor at school it looks good. What do you think?

Well, here is the final image
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1557121
Better isn't it?

For the courious one:
I'll add 2d-trees for the shadows on the forground, aiko's hair, i'll add lights in the sword and the hourglass, and changes the admosfere (volumeric wolds make rendertime endless)

Thanks for the help

Boekenwuurm