Keep going, try different things, anything until something tickles your fancy enough to stay with it for a while.
How many hours a day, days in a week does it take to excel at ANYTHING? You start with a first ‘sketch’ of an idea and work and rework it from that. And you have to practice as often as possible, as long as possible, until you can make a ‘breakthrough’ in your vision and point of view.
Alexy Brodovich made Avedon reshoot pairs of shoes for months and months before he gave him an assignment!
Different types of photos call for different lenses. Some lenses are good compromises, some are THE tool to get the job done. What do you think you’ll be shooting, sports, still life, portraits, landscapes, close-ups (macrophotography), food...?
Golden Rule wrote:
Strobes have much more power than a single flash. BTW, I tried gold reflectors and was given the perfect shiny gold from the cobwebs but the reflectors did not spread the light evenly in the background. The bottom of the material was still almost black because no light was reaching that part of the pattern.
Can you separate the table and the background far enough so the background gets even light from the banks and doesn’t get a reflection from the black table?
WOW, I hate to think of a case like this, what did the principal, superintendent, BoE say? Would they approve funding for appropriate lenses? Is there a wealthy parent or resident in town? Can the sports department transfer them into their budget line?
I'm remembering Unique Photo sales person in Fairfield, NJ saying the newer generation of Canon ink and pigment printers, Pro 100, Pro 10, etc., are not so subject to the dry ink problem, maybe call them, or your local photo shop, not a big-box store, for more info.
Maybe looking at some Rembrandts, Carravaggio (spelling?), Paul Strand and/or Vermeers could help a little bit.
This might be a little late? Once you set the two background lights, I would try to set a third or fourth as spotlights, on the cat. Any fur will suck up light. The pumpkin might need a spotlight as well. Be aware of avoiding spill from the spot(s). You can get heavy black foil or paper, as a make-do, to make snoots for your strobes to control the spill. Have fun
Look up the work of Matthew Brady. I don’t know a lot about it, a little bit. The glass plates were wet egg emulsions, loaded and developed in a darkroom wagon that traveled with the photographer. The lenses back then I believe often had Waterhouse stops, a set of metal slides with the different apertures, slid into the barrel lens.
If you are their only hope-maybe you can get some first -hand experience tagging along or as an assistant with a wedding photographer beforehand to see the reality of what goes on ‘behind the scenes’ of the photography assignment. It’s more than you can imagine. They, and you, don’t know what you don’t know.
Read more watch more on how to organise in LR, try to learn it. You’ll untangle it.
Olympus in South Hackensack is a quick ride over the GW bridge or through the Lincoln Tunnel if you have a rental car, straddling I80. If you go, Chubbys BBQ on River Road is awesome.
Most lenses, especially zooms and even prime wide angles have those distortions near the edges and learning to use that distortion is part of the game. Some viewers like it, some don’t.