Very good first render, but I have to say "girl & car" is probably a too common subject. :-)

My 2 cents to what has been suggested so far:

Light/shadow softness: opinions vary a lot in the posts above because in real world the shadow softness also varies a lot. In a cloudy day you can have 5% or 10%, in a bright sunny day you can have 0.1 or 0.2, with all the grades in inbetween, depending on the amount of clouds, haze, fog and even if you are in northern latitudes or southern. In Sweden the light is very different from Portugal, for example.

So, when you choose your softness, you should do it based on the kind of sky, fog and haze that you have in your scene. Depending on the latitude of your scene (a mountain in Germany or a desert in Sahara), you also want to change the softness.

Shadow density: many people recommend 85% or many other values. I absolutely do not recommend using anything different from 100%, for these reasons:

1) It's not what happens in real world. Let me explain: It's true that in real world, the shadows are not pitch black, but this is surely not because the sun change its properties. This is because there's light bouncing from other objects and from difused light in the atmosphere, which makes the shadows lighter. So, that's what we should aim at in Vue as well. There are many ways of doing this, here's some from the top of my mind, which can (should) be combined for a better effect:

• increase sky dome lighting gain (which simulates light that indeed comes from the sky dome in real world)
• make light balance at 30% (or any other value you like) (which simulates overcast skies)
• use glow in sky, fog, haze tab (which simulates diffuse light in real atmospheres)
• use radiosity gain (this is not a real world equivalent)
• use secondary directional lights (fairly dark) (could happen in real world, depending on circumstances)

2) Second reason for not using anything less than 100% in shadow density is that this is a source of noise in the shadows, in certain conditions. To compensate for this, you have to increase the quality boosts in several places, which increases render time.

Hope this helps! :-)