We pulled our Jeep Wrangler up to the ruins of the 18^th-century Danish sugar mill and the first thing that caught my eye wasn’t the towering remains of the windmill but rather the total absence of other tourists. As a long-time travel photojournalist whose assignments have flung me to some far corners, I probably appreciate better than some the value of a historic site like Catherineberg, located on the Caribbean island of St. John, when there are no visitors walking in frame and blocking my shot. Much of this no doubt has to do with the fact that to reach Catherineberg, protected as part of the U.S. Virgin Islands National Park, requires off-roading in a vehicle with 4x4 capabilities.

What next caught my eye was the underground storage vault. Although the space boasted a pair of ground-level windows, overcast skies that morning were letting little light into the darkened, cavernous vault. It made me glad I had packed prepared for such a photo op. Tramping around the globe for 25 years has taught me a thing or two about how to cram a maximum amount of camera gear into a modest-sized knapsack -- this because I never know if the assignment is going to spring on me, say, an unanticipated food shoot or a rambunctious presidential election night on the rum-drenched streets of Santo Domingo.

Or, in this case, the storage vault of an old sugar mill.

But packing as light as possible is also imperative when you’re out in the field for 12 to 16 hours at a stretch or schleping your bag up a daunting Alpine footpath just to get a shot of the Swiss valley below.

Besides my camera bodies and lenses, a couple of diffusers plus polarizing and neutral-density filters, I always carry at least three Speedlights with me at all times for off-camera strobe set-ups. Most of the time they’re old Nikon Speedlight SB-24s, -26s and -28s. Why? They’re relatively cheap, so if I break one during my travels (as I’ve been known to do), I’m not out the cost of a far more expensive SB-800 or -900. I also pack a Justin clamp or two plus a couple of cold-shoe stands just for good measure.

Since I’m traveling with older Speedlights, many of which won’t slave off each other, I trigger them with equally inexpensive poverty wizards. My pov-wizs of choice are Yongnuo 2.4GHz wireless flash triggers – a set of four receivers and one transmitter will set you back about $90. They’re much smaller and lighter than Pocket Wizards (not to mention far less expensive) and can be easily tucked into my bag's leftover nooks and crannies. (No, you can’t shoot TTL with them, but I don’t mind dealing with the extra manual futzing/adjustments.)

To light the interior of the storage vault, I set two Speedlights on plastic stands on the floor of either side of the interior, angled at 45 degrees so the light would wrap up and around the stone ceiling and create a generally diffuse light pattern. Here’s a close-up raw image of what the vault looked like with the two firing flashes visible:

Since the back wall was still too dark, I added a third strobe (with diffuser) on the ground (also angled at 45 degrees) behind the main column. Then I cranked up the other two Speedlights to manual ½ power to create more of a musculature light flow over the stone ceiling and support column, which in turn reflected back onto the floor (talk about great reflected-reflected light!). With illumination pretty much as I wanted, I ducked into the stepped, stone tunnel leading to the vault to compose my shot. I wasn’t interested in capturing the entire vault but rather the windows and main support column, plus a portion of the tunnel. Here’s what the finished shot looked like:

But for most travel photojournalists, there isn’t a next time. We have to nail it best we can while we're there and let the Monday-morning armchair nitpickers and GOHs (grumpy old hobbyists) have their say after the fact. Just so long as one of them isn’t my editor, it’s been a good day.