First attempt, drama with light

I. Subject and Space

What's up everyone. So i've been working at Adobe for a while now but from the complete opposite end of the spectrum. I'm a programmer and most of the time my face is burried in some code etc...embarassingly enough, I don't really know how to use some of our flagship products in an effective manner ( lightroom, photoshop, etc ). I recently decided to purchase a Sony a6000 camera and take this awesome course. Here are my results, please excuse any mistakes, can't wait to hear some feedback!

I did my shoot in the patio area of Asellina Ristorante in NYC. They have artifical turf on all of the walls in that area, and I figured it could be perfect for adding something interesting to the scenery.

II. Test Shots for Lighting

Here are a couple test shots I did for lighting:

III. Horizontal vs. Vertical Shots

Unfortunately, the area wasn't setup very well for horizontal shots. The patio seems to have been closed down for some reason, and there was a lot of extra "junk" littered around that would have caused distractions for the photo ( tables, chairs, etc ). As a result, I decided to stick with vertical shots.

IV. Final Portrait

Taking a couple tips from Justin's skillshare + applying a VSCO preset( from here ), I ended up with the following. Not sure if I applied "too much" of anything...But this is what I came up with !