Speedlite Practice C&C Welcome!

[OLaA]

Hello TPF! This is my first thread so I'll start by introducing myself. I'm a enthusiast who has been shooting for two years. Nothing serious, but constantly reading up on technique and trying new things. Recently I've been interested in off camera lighting. I've already learned how to balance ambient light (nowhere near mastering as lighting seems like learning to shoot all over again), although infinitely useful I find it rather boring at times. I've been wanting to toy with techniques and angles to get more dramatic shots. So I picked up a Canon 430 ex II (which I ended up returning) and decided to go in the backyard to shoot around with a buddy for practice. Composition really wasn't factored here as a I was shooting for the effect, although I should be in practice of combining the two whenever I shoot. Here's two of the shots....

The overall goal was over dramatic side lighting and to create a rim light with the sun. Wish I had a prettier model, but the light turned out how I wanted.







The second shot is just a knife for a assignment I was doing for Strobist.com. I couldn't isolate the object or create enough separation to kill all ambient light, or avoid reflected light as I intended. Thus you can see what I believe is a door knob in the background. Easily fixable with pp but you get the picture. And again composition wasn't my main goal, but going back it would've been smart to not have the handle cropped out.