How do you get a picture like this in terms of lighting? http://www.flickr.com/photos/udijw/3960203560/
One light source, somewhat diffused, off to the right hand side of the camera. Look at the shadow under the nose; you can tell that the light source is a little bit higher than the head. My guess is a small softbox or a smallish umbrella was used to light this shot, but it could have been done by any number of different methods. The light is not "overly hard", so it does not look like bare flash.
If you are not the copyright owner of the image you posted, you should link to it because of TPF's Rules and Regulations: The Photo Forum - Photography Discussion Forum - FAQ As far as the lighting......Look at the shadows. That will show you approximately where the light(s) were located. Only 1 light was used for this image and it was not mounted on the camera. It was placed high and right of the figure. The shadow cast under the nose shows how high and at what angle. The shadow cast on the side of the nose opposite the light location indicates how far in front of the camera the light was.
Buy the book 'Light, Science and Magic' and work your way through it and doing lighting like this is fairly simple. Also, there are likely a dozen different ways to get this shot. But if pressed, I would say... sofbox (likely), camera right, as Derrel said, above the subject, probably at a 45 degree in both the off-center and above. It's fairly small or far away as you're not getting a lot of spill around the (frame-)left side of the subject. The modifiers on the light might be misleading only because that type of surface shouldn't be prone to specular highlighting which you'll see with a smaller light source. This also makes it very difficult to ascertain the light shape (octagonal, square, round). Looking at the falloff it could be done with a bare head or a large snoot. It's certainly controlled so there's likely something containing the splashback frame-right (scrim, barndoors, etc).
Also take note of the falloff as well as the shadows. The chair is brighter at the front then the back which seems to indicate the the light is somewhat close to the subject. This also explains the black background. Separating the subject from the background with distance and keeping the light close to the subject means the background gets very little light and thus is dark in comparison. If you're really interested in lighting and don't wish to dive straight in and go buying books, or eek head to the library, check out Strobist and read through Lighting 101.
