Well, I'm no expert on lighting by any stretch of the imahination, but maybe I can give you couple more specific pointers... I hope you don't mind me using one of your images and doing a little photoshop work to give you something for comparison.

One thong that came to mind is a lesson that in photos, pictures, paintings and anything natural, nothing is pure black or pure white. What that means in terms of lighting is that for an image to look little more natural and realistic and appealing in general, the range of light doesn't have to go all the way from very dark to super bright.
What a lot of people picked up on, I think, is that the lighting does just that, runs full range, from black to white, and it gives the images appearance that is a little on a stark side.
What that does is causes the viewer to notice the lighting before they notice what's going on in the images.

I took one of your images, the one I thought had the best lighting and ran it through about a dozen filters and things in photoshop to try and soften in some. What I did is still far from perfect, but I'm hoping it may give you something to compare to, and some more specific idea, other then just statements to work on the lighting...  (I know if I read about working on lighting, I'd be pulling my hair wondering, um, I'm aware I need to learn more, but could you give me some specifics to focus on???)   so, I hope that helps a little...  If you have questions, please ask :)

And your images are wonderful... bit;'s hard though, when you ask for critique, everyone focuses on critiquing, and forgets to tell you that the fact that there are things that can be worked on, they'e still wonderfuil. Everyone' images have something to be worked on... that doesn't make them bad!  You're doing a great job, don' t you forget that!!!   Hugz, Connie

Hi, my namez: "NO, Bad Kitteh, NO!"  Whaz yurs?
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