Limited Gear? No Problem

Of all the portraits I've made, this remains my favorite because it shows what you can accomplish on-location with limited lighting gear and a few brain cells.

Working with a single White Lightning X800 strobe, I used a 48" Octobox, no light stand, a set of Pocket Wizards, a tripod, some warm ambient light, and my friend Mike as a human light stand.

Mike was great, as he held the Octobox five feet in front of and above his sister-in-law for this portrait. Reducing the power of the strobe to 1/4 power allowed me to use the Octobox as a soft main light. It also allowed me to use the soft ambient tungsten light behind her as both a hair light and a background light.

As Mike and I tooled around a devastated New Orleans in March of '06, Mike's brother's family graciously opened their home to us while we documented the ongoing problems of the city. This portrait, along with others I made of the family, was my attempt at saying thank you for the wonderful hospitality they showed us while we were in The Big Hurt Easy.