Suzi Uzi

My daughter Emily Murray works with me as the designer for Ride Oklahoma Magazine. She is also a regular subject for my photography experiments and is also very involved in women's roller derby. Her skate name is "Suzi Uzi" and I always wanted to do a picture of her with a real Uzi submachine gun. She told me about a contest for a magazine so we decided to shoot this picture for her.

I scouted around and found an Uzi submachine gun at H&H Gun Range and a location at the Skky Bar in Bricktown. I provided a Kar K9 pistol for the leg holster.

To light this shoot, I used a large 72" softbox on a photogenic monolight to camera right. It basically provided the fill light and was NOT the key light. The key light was to camera left, a photogenic monolight with a 30% grid, focused on Emily' face. An SB-800 speedlight was beside it, zoomed to 105 mm and pointed at her skates to bring the light up on those.

Behind the bar I had to SB-800 speed lights. One aimed at the back wall with a purple gel, zomed out to 25mm or so. The other was pointed at Emily's back for a highlight and zoomed to about 50mm. All lights triggered via Pocket Wizards from my Nikon D2x mounted to a tripod.

Lots of fun but lots of work!