My daughter Emily Murray is a kick-butt roller derby star known as “Suzi Uzi”. She plays for the Red Dirt Rebellion roller girls in Oklahoma City, one of the few banked track leagues in the country. We have done quite a few skating photo shoots. This past summer she wanted to capture her softer side, so she called me up and asked if we could do a shoot in downtown Oklahoma City. Emily is such a fantastic model, I am always ready to photograph her. She makes my pictures look great!
So for this shoot we wanted to keep it simple – minimal equipment and lighting. Our goal was to move around and find some cool urban background and do some simple, fresh and easy shots. I grabbed my Nikon D3 and and an SB-900 with a homemade softbox on a very small Bogen light stand. We hiked around downtown and grabbed a few shots here and there, using the sun as one light source and my SB-900 off-camera as another source for fill.
It is photos like these that I use to remind myself I don’t always need a huge truckload of lighting equipment. These are some of my favorite pictures of Emily and they didn’t require huge lights, generators, or production staff. Just a dad, his daughter, a camera and one light, and the desire to create some cool images.
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