Natural Light Shooting

I've been doing some searching around at other photographers Portrait work. It looks to me that the photographers who do remote shooting don't always have elaborate equipment set ups like I do. It looks like a large bounce board and a good on camera flash, or no flash to that matter. They just use the avaliable light at the location.

This makes me nervous. Natural light... how many different white balance options are there? I need to work on this and figure out different senerieos. If a customer/model wants me to photograph them at their house, but there is no room for lighting, or if they want me to photograph them in their yard or at a park. Then what? I can't lug around lights or worst deny work because of this.

My next venture is to photograph with natural light. This will be very hard however since I do not have a good on camera flash.

Oh do I wish I had the SB 900 Flash for my camera. The built in on camera flash is so harsh and unflattering. I don't even understand why it's there. Well I know it is useful, but damn, it's just not flattering.

Even better yet one of those ring lights would be perfect as well. It looks like some attach right to an existing flash, like the SB800, and "light up" from that light. I can only imagine how nice and balanced and soft this light would look on a close up portrait.

I guess this topic turned in to "flashes" instead of natural light. But I wonder if they actually do go hand and hand. There will be a need for some fill light in a natural light setting. A bounce board will do the trick, but what if it's at dawn or dusk where there isn't a lot of sunlight.