Still practicing this flash stuff

Went to a seminar a week or so ago with Joel Grimes and he mentioned that forever he basically shot with one flash with it right in front of the client shooting across them. So figured I'd try it.

First shot was at 1/4 power on my flash, using the softbox but no reflector.



I could see it was too dark on the side, so I set up a silver reflector and put it to the left and tried it again.



This was a little better, but still not what I was looking for....seemed a little to bright, so I dropped the flash down to 1/8th power and tried it again. After editing I think this one came out the best, but I think I still need lots of practice. Any tips are appreciated.

You're onto a great start. Just one thing I would suggest is to raise your light box a bit so the shadow of the nose comes close to meeting the lip. and then work on relating to your subject to try make them have different expressions.

Dick, I can't give you any advice, but this video I posted in Education is explaining exactly what you are trying to do. One flash, soft box, reflector... portrait. I think it may give you a little more info or may just reinforce what you learned at the seminar. I have not even tried to do what you are doing, but the video did explain why, how and what to do for that portrait.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQhH2GC4DTM

It is long and at times gets a little slow, but overall for me it was well worth my time. Ha!

What cwgrizz said is very good; in fact a lot of Joe Brady is very informative. Here is a shot of one of our club members. To his right is a large Appolo Softbox with a ½ Power strobe (Olympus FL-50) which is pointed back to the reflector surface. At his left is a 32 inch white circular reflector lighting up the left side. We used a Sekonic L358 to determine the exposure. This was done in our meeting room; we used Lightroom to tether the D7K so that members could see what was happening and how the set up was done. The subject was place to the rear of the soft box so that light would wrap around him and the reflector to add light to the shadow side.
You are getting there. You do not have to spend a lot as I was using small srtobe but any manual strobe will work.
Lou Cioccio