Taking these shots and making sure the lighting was good was a step to editing and making them more better. By setting the ISO and Aperture to the right light to capture how I wanted the lighting to show in these both shots. In the first one I wanted the background to catch the attention as sets the difference between the light and darks. The second picture I shot was to focus the lighting from above and bring it down to his face; since the different lightings had different ISO’s the second one had a little lower setting than the first.
Great observations about how you got your light. You made good use of filling up your frame in these shots too! The 2nd one has pretty bright highlights, which is something we will learn to tweak some more in lightroom, but comes from such a difference between the shadow areas that aren’t being lit as directly.