[Les Meehan]

Dave, good effort! I'm going to give you a detailed critique OK? I know you are keen to do studio stuff.

Whenever I see any image where the subject contains a face I look at it as a portrait/model shot to assess the lighting, then as a still-life. So, in this example I would look at the lighting on the face to check the position of the main light. Here I see that the nose shadow is quite strong and this is the first one I look for. In this case the nose shadow is virtually going sideways, as opposed to e.g. going downward, indicating your flash was almost level with the middle of the face. I suspect you did this because of the brim of the helmet blocking the light from the eyes if you placed it higher. OK, having established where your light is I now look where the shadow ends i.e. the tip of the nose bit and see here that it doesn't quite touch where the cheek shadow is. A useful hint for lighting a face: either have the nose shadow touch the cheek shadow to form the classic 'triangular' lighting OR reduce the length of the nose shadow to echo the shape of the nose better. Also, having the nose shadow going downward always looks more natural since we are used to the Sun being in the sky above. In the position in this image the nose shadow is probably in the worse place possible creating that rather odd shaped highlight on the near cheek.

The reflected light is quite warm, what did you use for this (a table lamp or coloured card?) Although this is a low key image, I would have liked a hint of detail in the darkest parts (this may be present in the original so ignore if so). This is where expert control of lighting shows itself. Since with studio lighting you have TOTAL control, you need to be able to match the lighting contrast to your camera/intention: you cannot blame the weather if the contrast isn't right or whatever. In these digital days, I would suggest that having too much fill light is better than too little since you can always darken shadows later in post-process whereas if the lighting contrast is so high that the shadows are empty i.e. no detail, you cannot get any detail back later.

Have you studied the idea of lighting ratios? If not, I would suggest we have a chat about them.

The BG, I would have been tempted to light the BG to give some tonal gradation i.e. a graduated light to dark from behind subject (to start with). Many pros do this automatically to separate the subject from the BG even with low key shots. Totally black BG's are not as common in pro work as in amateur pics. Again, I appreciate that in this image you may have more detail than I can see here and you do mention bouncing some light into the BG.

You ask about making the light softer. This is usually dependant on the surface qualities of the subject. In this case, metal tends to reflect strong highlights and thus would suggest a large, soft light source so yes making a trace screen would be good here (and for people/models too). Bear in mind that the softer light source will affect the edges of the shadows and you need to ask what it is you want for the subject/image.

I think that will do for now, thanks for having a go at this following my suggestion. Using a 'bust' is useful for practicing since you don't have to worry about inter-action with a static subject (I also use a head bust for messing about with ideas).

Hope some of this helps for next time.

Cheers

Les