Taking your studio on location

Okay, so working in a studio is great because you're photographing your subjects in a controlled environment, right? But what happens if you need to take photos on location?

This often happens to me, as someone who also works at a local newspaper company. Some photographers for newspapers would just use on-camera flash to light their subject. Some would have a flash unit attached to the hotshoe on their camera for better lighting by means of bouncing it off the ceiling and onto the subject. I used to do that as well... and in some functions I just can't run away from the fact that I have to settle on using a flash unit and bouncing it off the ceiling to light up my subject. But I HATE to settle on just using that because the result can often be flat. I just hate it.