As a photographer light is everything. That’s why many professionals invest tens of thousands of dollars into proper studio lighting, but what happens when you need to leave the studio? I found myself asking this question today as I was headed out the door to the Virginia Beach Tattoo Festival. My goal was to capture the awesome and unique personalities of the artist and attendees, but I knew that the harsh florescent lighting of the convention center wasn’t going to cut it. I dug into my gear closet and found a solution that kept me mobile and provided the quality of light needed to produce work that I would be happy with, the Godox AD200.

The mobile nature of this strobe afforded me the ability to go from booth to booth and speak with the artist. My goal was to isolate the individual I was photographing, something that can be tricky at a festival with cluttered backgrounds and large crowds. Using this strobe with high speed sync (HSS) I was able to pull the subject out of the background by painting them with light. The concept of HSS is simple, you set your shutter speed to a ridiculously high number (I was shooting 1/800th) and when the flash fires you capture the light as it hits the subject but before it hits the back ground. It’s pretty rad that you can manipulate light so precisely!

At the end of the day I walked away with some amazing shots, and even better I got to meet a ton of great people.