Help With Editing. . .C&C Also Welcome

[jazeera]

Last night was my first official night taking portraits with my studio lights. I have only 2 and needed more, hence the shadows, but this was a gig that I did not have much time to prepare for.

I was expecting to have a full room to set up in and planned on using my 75mm lens, but when I arrived my room was cut in half so I ended up having to use my kit lens. Which I'm sure you all know at 18mm the quality isn't of the greatest.

Is there any way I can improve these photos in PSE and what exactly would I need to do?

f/11, 1/125s, ISO 200, 18mm

http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb306/lai24luv/IMG_0049.jpg

Your help is greatly appreciated!

[jazeera]

Did I post in the wrong section?

I've been doing some editing, getting rid of harsh shadows, contrast, darkening highlights. How does this look? Anyone? C&C Welcome Please.

I am very inexperienced with portrait photography, but I think for my first I did okay. I am just left will many hours of PP.

http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb306/lai24luv/IMG_0049edited2.jpg

[D Thompson]

Overall looks good to me. 2 lights is fine for this type of shot (main & fill). I may have used f8 instead, but that's a small difference here. As far as post work on this shot - open up the shadows a bit and bring in some highlights (his shirt is blown/approaching blown in areas).

I spent about 2 minutes on this. Cropped to 5x7, duplicated bg, applied a slight shadow/highlight adjustment, and then a curves adjustment layer on the luminosity. If most of your shots are like this, you should be able to set up an action and breeze right thru the post.