Good light can make or break a photograph. You can either play it safe or really push yourself.
Looking at a shot it can for the untrained eye be difficult to tell how a shot was lit. The top shot was actually outdoors and is a flower in the garden. I put a black cloth behind the flower and then added a flash to the side and the front. The shutter speed was high as was the flash power, this completely overpowered the daylight giving the feel I wanted.
The shot of Lisa is a very simple lighting setup, Two large soft boxes each side and a softbox over the model giving a kiss of light to the hair.
Once again the shot above is an interesting mix of daylight and flash. The daylight is deliberately underexposed with most of the light coming from a single Elinchrom flash head shooting into a brolly. The most challenging aspect of the shot once I had balanced the daylight and flash was the wind, it was after this shoot I purchased two heavy C-Stands.
Try challenging yourself with flash, either flash on its own or mixed with daylight, and once you find a setup that works file it a way for use when you need guaranteed results, then go out and challenge yourself again.