I worked on a series of test renders after reading this superb article about lighting. I tried to replicate many of the different types of lighting Richard Yot covered simply so I could understand them a bit bitter. Please bare in mind they're rather low quality Mental Ray renderings so I could dish them out faster.
This is typical mid day lighting. All the objects in the scene are grey so that the effects of the lighting changes can be seen more easily. At mid day there are fewer colors coming from natural light and the shadows are very strong and dark.
This is a study of color tone and brightness in open shade on a sunny day (mid-day to afternoon). The sun is not directly hitting any of the objects and instead they are illuminated only by reflected light from the environment around it and light from scattered blue photons in the sky.
This is a study of dusk. The objects are hit partially by the last of the warm light coming from the sun and partially by alpenglow--the pink light coming from the eastern sky right after sunset.
This is a test of lighting on a very cloudy day where it may rain any second. Notice here there are little to no shadows because the objects are already in shade created by clouds. This causes there to be less of the blue color seen above in the open shade. The only shadows created by the objects in this scene are caused by what little light is reflected in the shade itself.
This is a study of indoor lighting typically seen in places like restaurants, hotels and shops. It's a very warm and slightly dim orange tungsten light. Here the shadows are softened a little as there are multiple light sources in the room.
This is the same setup with florescent lighting typically seen in offices, subway stations, or other non-commercial settings.
All these scenes were rendered in 3dsMax.
