Local Lighting help please

Hi. I'm a novice builder, and I'm catching up pretty fast, but now I have met yet another wall that I need to climb, and that is creating local lighting. I've attatched a few images that shows what I'm trying to achieve.

How is it done, if at all?

Thanks in advance

If the pictures you posted are an indication, local lighting doesn't work quite the way you think it does. You won't be able to get crisp spotlight type effects like in some of those pictures by using SL lights. What you can do to simulate the effect though is to create textures that appear to be lit that way, and then use light objects simply as enhancements. Take a look at Chinatown for some great examples.

Chosen is on the mark here.
In fact, the example pics in the post are great reference for anyone who wants to make realistic lighting textures.

Yes, seeing Chinatown is a great way to see how you can get the look you're going for. I know how you can render light effects in Photoshop, but they don't quite shine like you can get by creating a seperate white based gradient shaped like a light-flare, placed on a prim and made 'light'. Also, look up past posts made by Jimmy Thompson, he's got some great walk-throughs for creating these kind of effects.

Thank you all for your replies, I now have a clear idea of what to do. I'll drop by Chinatown ans have a look later today. Hehe, I still tend to keep forgetting SL is not LightWave

Thanks for the help