Gabrielle is a writer for the company Fstoppers, and I met her while I was speaking at the big national photography convention ImagingUSA. This year the convention was just held in Nashville, and it’s unusual for it to snow there. But right after I finished speaking, we were hit with a gorgeous snow storm. And having met Gabi with her fun style and her purple hair, she seemed perfect for an impromptu photo shoot out in the cold snowy night.
Because I was there to speak and not take portraits, I didn’t have my typical professional load out of gear. But as I teach photographers at my workshops, great photography is about knowledge, not gear. We should be able to create great images with any gear, if we know what we’re doing. So using my small travel camera (that I refer to as my “toy camera”) along with a basic light and umbrella that I had with me, I was still able to control my lighting angles and create some great images. See what you think.
Though I had in mind color images in the snow, some of the images really popped as black and white. I really love how these look.
Also, the air was too frigid to work for too long outside. My fingers quickly stopped working and went numb as I tried to control the dials on my camera. So we went in and finished up our shoot using the indoor garden atrium of the Gaylord Opryland Hotel. The plants and leaves were the perfect backdrop for Gabi. 
And while in the atrium, we used one more backdrop – the walls of the indoor shops. It gave us the look of being off on location while actually being inside and warm. 
There’s a lot of personality in these images and I really love how they turned out. It would have been fun if Gabi and I had done a full shoot with various changes of outfits and location. Perhaps at another event sometime.
If you’re a photographer and would like more photographic training on lighting, gear, workflow, or even business and sales, check out more of the videos and content I have on this site. You can even join my email list for a set of training videos to be emailed to you to see what you might learn.
And until next time, America.