Some people buy art to hang on their walls — not Shane, he waned an AK-47 to sit above his mantelpiece. Who can blame him? It’s probably one of the most famous weapons in history, involved in nearly every major conflict world wide since it’s birth in the 1940s. You can drive over it with a tank, fill it full of mud, use it as a pez dispenser and it’ll keep on going — good work Mikhail Kalashnikov!

This shoot was not only the first time I got to hold an AK, but also the first time I got to play with my new PocketWizards. I’m probably on my 3rd or 4th set of  Yongnuo RF-602s and while I stand by them being a great budget trigger system, I have been wanting to upgrade for a while. Over the past few months I’ve been furiously deliberating want vs need with the PocketWizards. This week I made the decision and picked up a Mini TT1, 3 Flex TT5s and an AC3 Zone controller. (Blog post on these to follow soon!)

They work in perfect harmony with my Canon speedlites. The 2 features I’ll be taking advantage of the most are high speed sync & the ability to adjust the flash power output from the top of the camera. No more climbing up my boom arm, ripping open my soft box, adjusting the power, taking a photo, realising the power needs adjusting again, you get the idea…

I took this shot at about 6pm with the sun high in the sky, but shooting at 1/500th and ISO 50 meant I could cut out all the ambiant light I wanted and light the location my way. Awesome!