Location Lighting

Building a Travel-Ready Portrait Lighting Kit Around the Godox AD200: Lessons from Sean Tucker
Video Tutorials

Building a Travel-Ready Portrait Lighting Kit Around the Godox AD200: Lessons from Sean Tucker

For years, my commercial work meant hauling a rolling bag that weighed nearly as much as I do. Big monolights, extension cables, a separate power pack the size of a shoebox. I kept it all organized with masking tape labels and a lighting journal I’ve maintained since my first editorial job, but none of that organization made the bag lighter. The turning point came after I started looking seriously at battery-powered compact strobes, and the questions I was asking myself were exactly the ones Sean Tucker works through in this tutorial.

How to Use a Battery-Powered Monolight Outdoors Without Losing Control of Your Exposure
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How to Use a Battery-Powered Monolight Outdoors Without Losing Control of Your Exposure

Every location photographer eventually hits the same wall. You find a beautiful spot, the natural light is doing something interesting, and then your subject steps into the shade and becomes a muddy silhouette. You can expose for the shadows and blow out the background, or expose for the background and lose your subject entirely. Neither is acceptable on a commercial job. For years, the only real solution was hauling a generator or accepting the compromise.

Underlighting, Smoke, and Backlit Horror: What This Night Shoot Tutorial Taught Me About Atmospheric Lighting
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Underlighting, Smoke, and Backlit Horror: What This Night Shoot Tutorial Taught Me About Atmospheric Lighting

Halloween shoots are not my usual territory. My week typically involves a beauty brand’s new serum, a corporate headshot marathon, or a fashion editorial where the biggest drama is a wardrobe change. But atmospheric night lighting outdoors, with practical effects and monstrous characters? That’s a completely different problem set, and one I have embarrassingly little experience solving. When I stumbled across JP Morgan’s advanced night lighting tutorial from The Slanted Lens, I watched it three times, then opened my lighting journal and started sketching.

Never Run Out of Juice on Location: Joel Grimes' Battery Pack System for Strobe Shooters
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Never Run Out of Juice on Location: Joel Grimes' Battery Pack System for Strobe Shooters

There is one specific kind of dread I know too well: standing on a location shoot, three lights running, no outlet within a hundred yards, and a battery indicator that is not cooperating. I have been doing commercial work long enough to know that power logistics are not glamorous, but they will end your shoot faster than bad light ever will. When I first started doing outdoor work for fashion clients here in Los Angeles, my entire power strategy was “stay close to a building.

Off-Camera Flash at Weddings: How to Use a Secondary Strobe Without Killing the Mood
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Off-Camera Flash at Weddings: How to Use a Secondary Strobe Without Killing the Mood

Wedding receptions are one of the few situations where I genuinely have to fight my studio instincts. My default is control: flagged lights, metered backgrounds, everything taped and labeled. A reception hall gives you none of that. The light is already doing something, the room has a mood, and your job is to work inside it rather than override it. That tension between “enough light to get the shot” and “too much light to keep the feeling” is exactly what this tutorial addresses.

How to Light Business Portraits in Tight Office Spaces Using Bounce and Fill
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How to Light Business Portraits in Tight Office Spaces Using Bounce and Fill

There is one scenario that comes up constantly in corporate location work and never gets easier: you walk into the meeting room, the client is waiting, and you have roughly the square footage of a large bathroom to produce a portrait that looks like it was shot in a proper studio. I have been in that situation more times than I care to count. My usual instinct used to be to force a softbox into the space and fight the ceiling tiles.

Studio Anywhere: What Joel Grimes' Sprinter Van Teaches Us About Portable Portrait Lighting
Video Tutorials

Studio Anywhere: What Joel Grimes' Sprinter Van Teaches Us About Portable Portrait Lighting

There’s a specific kind of anxiety that hits when a client wants “something different” and your entire lighting setup lives in a studio you can’t move. I’ve felt it. You start mentally cataloging what you can rent, what you can beg from another photographer, whether a speedlight-and-reflector combo can pull off the look you promised. The answer is sometimes yes, but the planning overhead is brutal. That’s why when I came across this Joel Grimes tutorial showing how he built a fully functional portrait studio inside a Winnebago Revel Sprinter van, I watched it twice before breakfast.

Harlowe's Max Bi-Color LED Monolights: Power Meets Practicality in the Modern Studio
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Harlowe's Max Bi-Color LED Monolights: Power Meets Practicality in the Modern Studio

I’ve spent enough time in studios and on location shoots to know that lighting equipment rarely excels at everything. You typically sacrifice power for portability, or wireless convenience for consistent color temperature. So when I heard about Harlowe’s expanded Max Bi-Color LED monolight lineup, I paid attention—because the company seems intent on collapsing those compromises. What’s New Harlowe has introduced several new configurations of their Max monolights, all centered around a 120-watt fixture that’s substantially more powerful than most portable LED solutions currently on the market.