Technical manuals on light are helpful for the enthusiast, but there are a few good shortcuts anyone can use. For quick-and-easy lighting that makes people attractive, you want the light to be coming from large sources and multiple directions. Instead of a bare flash bulb, or a bare light bulb, you'd like the light to come from as many larger sources as possible: diffusing from bulbs through lampshades and bouncing off of walls, for example. If you're more ambitious, you'll start finding the parts of your home that create more attractive light than others: Try shooting in places with sunlight coming through a Northern window (in our Northern hemisphere), where the light is diffusing off of everything outside before it comes inside, instead of shining directly from the sky. Or any room where the light is coming through a window with a sheer curtain (or temporarily taped-up bed sheet) that can diffuse the sun's light. Or rearrange some of the lamps in your home, or your subject's orientation in relation to them: A common arrangement is to have this main source of light hit the face at a 45-degree angle, and then have other lights fill in at lower levels. What you're doing here is imitating the professional lighting angles of high-end equipment, just with the much lower quantities of light already available in your home, thanks to the advanced sensor technology enabling a high ISO.