You are walking through a dark alley at night. There is only one electrical light located here and a lot of shadows. What type of light is it, and where is it located?

overhead  wide beam  floodlight

Needs to be a Poser Pro 2014 Light.

dont have PP2014  so was a guess

     Try a spotlight with raytraced shadows (about 0.67 shadow strength)

     You'll have a choice of attenuation:  constant, inverse linear, inverse square.  Try all three to see which gives the best effect for what you envision.

     The spotlights can be adjusted for spread angle (how wide the cone of light is).

     You can see exactly where the shadows will fall if you look through the spot's shadowcam.

     If previewing in OpenGL with hardware shading enabled, you'll get a good idea of the light & shadow.

Lights reflecting off passing traffic

Spots and points and objects

break the light no one is scared of the dark!!

its the shadows that gave you heart attacks ;-)

you need to know what its lit by

odd windows ? a street light or just some moonlight

all have diff "solutions"

It depends on how you imagine the image to be. Is it totally dark with a single light? Can you see some dark shapes to define the environment a little?

For me, if the lamp model exists, I use point lights with inverse linear attenuation and place it inside the shade part of the lamp. Adjust materials if needed to get it to work. I'd also use a skydome, with a suitable night image attached, and ambient between 0.5 and 1. Use IDL, set bounces to 4 to get some penetration into corners.

But that's just how I imagine such a scene.

That's what I'm talking about piersyf! Thank you all!

Rusted Regency Park type plinth, single bulb dangling through the broken globe by its wires.  Slightly damp sidewalk for reflection.