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I just came across a great photographer on Facebook and I was literally stunned when I looked over his albums. He had some portraiture work that I would call as "Freaking Awesome"! Here's the gallery:
Faces, by Chris Conway Photography
What I would like to know is the technique used behind these kinds of amazing photographs. The light set-up and the post-processing tricks.
Here's a similar but not identical shot I did a while ago:
The background is just a bare hotshoe flash pointing at a white wall, it's easiest to setup the background first, without the main lights:
And then position the main lights, turning the background light off to check for interference from the main lights:
As you can see the main lights do spill onto the background (which is inevitable when lighting a small space) however the lighting is approximately constant across the background so I can account for it by turning the background light down a little.
Here is the lighting diagram:
The main difference with the lighting on the shot you posted is that I have an asymmetric setup with two main lights. The image you posted has a fairly symmetrical pattern with two kickers, probably small softboxes either side (similar to the right hand light in my shot) and a main lightsource coming from above to fill out any shadows in the face. From the long nose highlight I'd guess the main was a striplight in a vertical orientation. Possibly more lights for the hair or for additional fill.
As for post processing, nothing too special here, slight curves adjustment, dodging and burning, most of the work is done with the lights. A B/W conversion using a lot of the red channel was probably used as this gives a nice bright look to the skin which you seem to be after. Here is a comparison of the three colour channels, from left to right, red, green and blue:
