Lighting can make a big difference in a photo. I am not very good at carving a pumpkin, but I can improve my picture by light painting. I went ahead and set up my pumpkin and put it on some chairs. I then covered the chairs with a black table cloth.
Next, I turned off all of the lights and put a candle in the pumpkin. I then got a flash and covered it with a blue gel. I then did an exposure for a few seconds, and while the shutter was open, I would manually fire off the flash several times. I then repeated this with a red gel over my flash. The picture below is one with a red flash.
This picture below is with blue gel.
These pictures have improved the quality, but are not to my liking. I decided to go ahead and combine both of these photos in Photoshop. Here is the final picture below.
The pumpkin was lit up with the red gel, and the background is from the picture that was lit up with the blue gel. Overall, I love the results I have achieved.