People always ask me how many flashes they should have. That's an easy one -- however many you can afford, plus one or two.
See? Easy.
But a good, basic kit is two speedlights -- plus the assorted doohickeys needed to make them work well. And after all, if you have just one flash and it goes down you are merely an available light photographer. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)
Two lights not only give you lots of options but serve as insurance, too. Starting today, we will be looking occasionally at some different, two-light portrait setups.
Nothing too fancy pants. But not the typical stuff, either. Details on the shot above, after the jump.
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Not Another Umbrella / Rim Light
I say that because I went to this well way too often in my early days. Not only that, the umbrella always seemed to come from the right front, and the rim from the back left.
Why? I have absolutely no idea. I was like a little "lighting function key" or something. Press me, and you'd get a camera right umbrella portrait with a back left rim. Go figure.
Nothing if not consistent, I suppose. Perfectly acceptable -- certainly compared to on-camera or bounced flash. But... boring, Sydney.
Not to dis. If done subtly and with regard for the ambient, that technique can look elegant. But if you have two lights you can create a look without the need for any contributory ambient, which is a term I just pulled out of my made up.
Soft / Hard Combo
Usually, my workflow when setting up a two-light, flash-only shot is to build the fill first. Choose the quality of fill light, expose for it, then knock the aperture down to build whatever lighting ratio you want. Then add the key, salt to taste, and simmer for two minutes until the sauce thickens.
But this time we were already working with a gridded key, which by itself looked like the photo at left.
Not bad, if you are into floating heads.
Bringing in the fill from just below on-axis (see photo up top) gave a cool up-light to Riaz's arms. It also wrapped an atypical, 3D-ish light when combined with the key. And the slight specular you can see on the wall down low is also from the fill.
That specular erases much of the shadow on the wall created by the fill, which makes the light a little hard to reverse at first blush. That's because the missing shadow doesn't seem to play by the rules.
The top of the fill light (shoot-thru umbrella) was just below the lens, which meant that the center point for the fill was a foot and a half or so below the lens axis. The ratio was about two stops down -- a good two stops, as Miracle Max would say in The Princess Bride.
I like the look for a few reasons -- it is controlled, I can produce it just about anywhere with two flashes and it is a little bit atypical. That last one is always a plus in my book.
When the Ambient is Not Your Friend
Having some two-light, flash-only solutions in your pocket is a good fallback when you ambient is crappy and your only backdrop is a wall. This wood-paneled wall is actually pretty cool. But later in this series we will be up against the more garden-variety white version.
Today one of my favorite portrait photographers, Ben Baker, was profiled on Feature Shoot, one of my must-read photo sites.
Most of you guys like to ape great shooters. That's Dave Honl, left, shooting a great ape. 
This little nubby little thing may not look like much, but it is an off-camera solution for just about any speedlight that includes manual settings. It'll give a sync jack to a camera, too.
It features a hot shoe on top and bottom, and dual sync options for corded use. Like the LumoPro LP120 (the first production run of which is sold out, with more expected in a few days) it has both a PC sync and a 1/8" minijack sync. 
One of my biggest apprehensions before the week was having no idea where the students would be, ability-wise, when they arrived. Would some of them be long-time pros? Would some be rank beginners? Worse yet -- maybe a mix of both?
Many people look at lighting as a technical thing. In reality it is about as technical as playing with the bass and treble knobs on your stereo. And about as difficult, truth be told. I would rather be math-challenged and very creative and be learning this stuff than to be an engineer with the same goal.
Syl Arena is the proprietor of Paso Robles Workshops, where we were all learning together. (Syl's the guy under he mop of red hair at center left.) He and I originally planned on forming the class into teams based on their brand of gear and various synching methods. In the end we ended up rotating them into a completely new group every day, making for a more diverse experience for the whole class.
After this week I feel even more strongly that the key to understanding lighting is to become very comfortable with the concept of balance. We have talked about it in L101 and L102, and in just about every OA post. But everything comes down to how well you understand this concept. All of the other stuff is icing on the cake.
Once you get the concept, play. A lot. That is a big part of the strength of a five-day workshop -- total immersion learning. I demo'd on Monday, and they shot every other day. 
Lots of rookie lighting photogs crash here. They spend so much energy working out the light that they neglect the most important part of the process. Save your subjects' attention spans for when you are done with the lighting tweaks away and ready to start making photos. 
The dynamic of team learning is hard to beat. Go to a meetup. Find another local shooter and practice some together. They understand you way better than your poor spouse does. Another lighting photographer will be a VAL (voice-activated light stand) or VAB (same, but a boom) for you until their arms fall off, simply because they want to see what the light can do from way up there, too.
