Lighting with speedlights in harsh light

I'm doing a lighting class at the moment. I've never really shot in a studio properly as all of my photography has been on location, so I decided it'd be a good idea to learn some things about studio lighting. It's been interesting so far, but this weekend we did an outdoor shoot in midday... yes, it was around 12pm and the sun was strong and extremely harsh. Hardly an ideal time for shooting. Anyway, the key idea was to understand how to balance the light using reflectors and how to overpower the sun using flash.

We did a few shots with a proper strobe and a beauty dish, which turned out pretty cool. But the coolest thing was when we decided to try it using my speedlights... and it worked wonderfully! The above image was shot using an SB-800 and an SB-600 fired remotely by the on camera flash in a Nikon D70s (using Nikons Creative Lighting System). Both strobes were behind a white shower curtain to soften the light a bit. The sun was coming from high above, slightly to the right of the camera as can be seen by the shadow on the bench.

What's great is that those little flashes were enough to overpower the sun and create an interesting lighting effect. Unfortunately we didn't have a beautiful model to shoot that day, so we had to do with Greg. He's the photographer who's teaching the class. Thanks Greg, it was a great day!