1st time in the studio

I have had a desire to want to learn studio photography for a while now(and dont feel like waiting for my portrait class at school) so I rented out a local studio for 2 hours last night. I figured $60 isnt too bad if i can manage to learn something. The studio rental came with 3 lights/stands/umbrella​s but for the majority of the shots I used 1 light/umbrella, a ghetto foam reflector, and 1 background light. I had never so much as touched a strobe in my life and had literally no knowledge of how to do things. I showed up 20 minutes before my model(who happens to be my cousin, family members are always subject to this kind of treatment eh?) and started trying to figure it out. I had a ton of fun, learned quite a bit, but still have ALOT more to learn. Heres 2 that I quickly resized/converted.

Am I on the right track????

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Byte size: ZERO | PHOTOBUCKET ERROR IMAGE

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Byte size: ZERO | PHOTOBUCKET ERROR IMAGE

Image data shows your exposure time of 1/320. Try to keep it at 1/250 or slower. 1st. one not too bad for your first try. 2nd one is under exposed a little. Also you have plenty of light available to use iso of 100. Good luck.

it seems like the lighting inst even which is making your background go from white to light gray, something to watch out for (i do this a lot)
the lighting also seems a bit flat, try and get creative with lighting and posing

Stav

Thanks for the advice, I was mostly trying to figure out how to work the lights etc, now that I know that Im going to work on the lighting and poses. Im on my work computer right now and when I posted them I was on my home computer, boy do they look different on a monitor that has not ever been callibrated. Ill watch out for the gradation too.

Thanks again for the tips