Storyhunter Takeover: @morganawingard

Instagram Takeover: Morgana Wingard

This week freelancer Morgana Wingard took over our Instagram account to share some of the portraits she shot of Yazidi refugees in Northern Iraq. Wingard is an American photojournalist and documentary filmmaker based in Africa. For the last ten years she has been helping charities, NGOs and humanitarian aid organizations around the world share their stories of transformation.

Morgana says she has been wanting to capture better portraits of the people that she meets in the remote places that she finds herself in. She’s also inspired by Annie Leibovitz, and had the opportunity to work with her in New York City. She aims to imitate the style of Leibovitz’s soft lighting in regard to portraits, but finds that working the field under unknown circumstances makes that very difficult.

She often travels to remote regions of the world to interview beneficiaries and subjects, and spends countless hours on planes and in cars. This means, that she needs to travel light with a skeleton kit to be nimble and easily transportable, she said.

She’s been looking for the right equipment that would be easily transportable, but the weight of professional lighting kits has been a problem for her.

“But, when Profoto came out the B1 I which has a built-in battery into the head, I realized I finally found what I was looking for,” Wingard said. “Something that could be portable enough, yet big enough to get the look as I was going for, but it’s still small enough that I can carry it in my purse on the plane (albeit it’s a large mom looking purse).”

She decided to use her new lighting kit for the first time in Iraq.

“I’ve been fascinated with the country for years and have been looking for an opportunity to go. When one of my best friends moved there last year, I jumped at the opportunity,” she said. “My friend’s husband works for a non-profit charity that is supporting the Yazidi refugees who fled Sinjar Mountain when it was taken over by ISIS in August 2014,” she said. “They kindly hosted me for four weeks, and gave me access to the camps to interview and photograph the refugees.”

Want to see more of Wingard’s photos? Check them out here.

If you’d like to take over our Instagram account, shoot us a note: community@storyhunter.com.