To solve that issue, the short answer is to learn lighting in Maya or whip out your camera.

Long answer:

What is seen in that render is direct illumination only, no bounce light at all and this is normal default behavior. The Maya Software render engine doesn't have the features to simulate these natural occurrences(unless you meticulously place and configure a lot of lights) but mental ray does(Final Gather, Global Illumination, Ambient Occlusion etc).

Then there are other things to consider for realism, like physically accurate surface materials and camera exposure controls. At least these are available when using mental ray.

Learning how to realistically light in mental ray for Maya has it's frustrations, in some areas it's not very user friendly and if you have no experience with any of this then it can be quite the undertaking. There are other renderers for Maya out there, some arguably more user friendly but I can't think of a free one(3Delight?). Whipping out a camera and snapping some pictures is really sounding like the better suggestion here lol.