I had a look at your posting history, and the kind ofquestions you have asked. You've been given lots of very good advice. Perhaps the issue is that you have to start learning some of the theory that you're been shown, and to then start applying it. Trying to do too much at once,without having the fundamentals in place, is frustrating, and ultimately self-defeating. The main issue at the moment, from what I can see, is that you don't have a good feel of how light works. That's not a sin, very few of us understand at the beginning (the book that Overread recommends is excellent, and has helped me get a much better idea of how to approach lighting). But building up the knowledge of how to use it and how to shape it takes time and lots of practice. So let's break it down a bit.
First, do you know your dynamic range of your camera? How many stops above mid-point can you go and still retain detail? Same question on the other side.Why is this important? Because it allows you to decide to to expose for the highlights and the shadows. Say, you know that your camera has a 4-stop range on the upside, and a 5-stop range on the downside. You can take an average meter reading of your subject and say get 1/200sec at f/5.6. Then you spot-meter the highlights (the ones where you still want to see detail), and let's say you get 1/1000 at f/5.6 That's 2.5 stops above the midpoint, well within your 4-stop range. But if the highlight was metered at 1/4000 at f/5.6, you'd be blowing it.
Next, do you understand the concept of Depth-of-field? If you are photographing a person at say, 6ft. with a 50mm lens at f/5.6 and a crop camera, your DOF is roughly 11 inches (6 inches beyond the point of focus and 5 inches in front). That DOF is enough to get the whole head in focus. But if you had another person standing behind them, then that person would be soft. Your desired DOF drives your aperture, which in turn drives your power setting of your flashes/strobes.
Another area to look at is your light placement. Start with a single light and move it around. Learn about short lighting and broad lighting. Learn about Rembrandt lighting. Then get a feel for the inverse-square law, which affects the light intensity as it relates to distance. Get a feeling for the degree of light fall-off when the light source is close, and when it is far. Next, look for filling in the shadows with either reflectors or fill light. Once you get that nailed, learn the use of highlights and ways of separating the subject from the background.
These are all technical details that should be part of the fundamental knowledge of any photographer. Once you have them, you can concentrate on the posing, the arrangements, etc., because you dont have to worry about getting the basic images properly lit and exposed. But without these fundamentals, you will have a very uneven set of results.
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