So I went for some more inspiration searching today, and ended up plopping a teddybear on a tripod, chucking an umbrella light in front of it and snapping away. The experiment ended with a thought. It's much easier to play with light in a controlled environment. Even if this environment was built with a speedlight, an umbrella and two pieces of white poster board as reflectors. I think the next item on my wish list is a set of real lights.
Here's the shot, pretty much SOOC:
And here's the pullback:
It was almost too easy to get nice light this way. I can totally see why people do studio over natural light, because there's no time of the day you couldn't shoot, and you don't have to drag your gear all over.
