Hands-0n Lighting
Pack Small, Play Big
Pack Small, Play Big is a fast-paced, hands-on lighting and location portrait workshop built for photographers who want to become more proficient assignment photographers, efficient, adaptable, and ready for anything. The core idea is simple: You don’t need a truck full of gear to make world-class portraits. You need a smart plan, a small kit, and the confidence to solve problems in real time.
Taught by artist and educator Clay Patrick McBride, with 30 years of assignment photography experience, this workshop mirrors the realities of editorial and commercial shoots: limited time, unpredictable locations, mixed lighting, and the pressure to deliver strong frames on demand.
We’ll begin with a quick breakdown of a lightweight professional kit, how to pack it, move with it, and build redundancy without overloading your bag. Then we hit the street to work real-world constraints: harsh sun, ugly walls, tight spaces, weather shifts, distracting backgrounds, and subjects who don’t have time to “warm up.” You’ll learn to see light fast, choose angles that simplify the scene, and create portraits with shape and mood using compact strobes, speedlights, small modifiers, and practical light.
This workshop prioritizes decision-making over perfection. We’ll cover directing with clarity, building trust quickly, balancing ambient with flash, controlling spill, and creating a consistent look across multiple locations. We’ll also touch on assignment workflow: expectations, timing, shot lists, and delivering under pressure. You’ll leave with a repeatable system and portraits that feel editorial, intentional, and alive.
THIS WORKSHOP IS SOLD OUT! Please note that space is limited; this pre-conference workshop requires a separate fee. Full Northern Short Course registration is not included with this workshop.
Don’t forget to bring your camera and a lens to take part in this hands-on workshop.
This workshop is sponsored by
Speaker
Clay Patrick McBride
Clay Patrick McBride is known for his bold portraiture that celebrates his subjects through empowerment, humor, honesty, and grit; he has an ability to connect with his subjects in a way that is personal, intense, and collaborative in nature. His philosophy of image-making fuses experimentation with classical training in painting and art history, resulting in an iconic visual language that creates a conversation between the old and the new world. McBride began his visual training in the South of France in his late teens and early twenties before moving to NYC to study at the School of Visual Arts for photography. McBride shifted his focus to photography after being inspired by the notorious CBGB music club and the revolutionary music and visuals emerging from that scene in the Gen X 90’s. His deep interest in connecting with and understanding the world around him is what drives McBride to keep exploring new processes, techniques, and to examine the interplay between process and the portrait, time and space. A recent fascination for McBride has been collodion wet plate photography – where he brings his mobile darkroom set up to skate parks and photographs strangers. Always trying new approaches to the image, he explores chemigrams and other alternative processes, as well as film and music videos. One of his most recent film productions is The Incredible Exploding Boy, which explores the complex and often challenging relationship between fathers and sons, mental illness, and addiction through an autobiographical lens. Currently, he is a senior lecturer at Rochester Institute of Technology, where he mentors the next generation of visual artists, living between Rochester, NY, and NYC with his wife, Sarah Keane, and Italian mastiff Judy.
Sponsored by
