ooh only just spied this thread and luckily earlier this evening I was taking some head shots of my brother-in-law who wanted some pictures to give to his girlfriend as a present.
haven't really much experience of shooting other people like this (but shooting self portraits for the last 365 days seems to have been great practice after all

)
nikon d80 and my 50mm at f3.3 1/250 (ISO 100)
used off camera sb600 to camera left through a white umbrella with a 1/4 cto gel