Amami Superman Photography

This is Grandma Gerry. I call her grandma even though she is not a blood relative of mine. She is in-fact a good friend of mine's mother, my Uncle Steve. Now, Uncle Steve is not in-fact my uncle, but he raised us up when my brothers and I were young, and he is more than family. This shot was taken out in front of my Uncle Steve's house.

I decided not to bring my camera to America for our trip home last month. I knew I would have plenty of things to carry so decided against it. In all honesty, I was torn-hearted about it, but I think I made the right choice considering how much we had to take home with us. These photos were taken by my Uncle Steve and his compact camera, a Canon PowerShot SD940 IS.

While visiting, we had the chance to go out and shoot some guns. You maybe thinking, "Holy jeeze, GUNS!", but I grew up on a reservation and having guns was a normal thing. I have a great respect for guns and I thought it would be a good experience for my wife and daughter who never really get the chance to be around them.



So we took a relatively short drive up into the mountains to find a safe place to shoot our guns. Where we were shooting was perfectly legal. Before shooting, we gave my wife some pointers about how to shoot a gun. She got the whole, "Keep the butt of the shotgun in your shoulder." But she kind of blanked out when it came to how she should be standing. Here is a video of her shooting her first gun.

So that is a video of my wife shooting a 12 gauge shotgun for the firs time. We told her how to stand, but she go her left and right foot mixed up and had her right foot forward when she was shooting. I didn't take this video, it was my Uncle Steve. He know quite a fair bit of Japanese so he's the one asking her, "Dou desu ka?", which means, "How is it?" I got a kick of her reaction. It was priceless, "Whoa!!!!!!" You can hear someone before she shoots to tell her to place her footing better. I laugh every time I see this.

We also had a Glock 17 and we let my wife try it out.


After that we decided to let my nine year old daughter try and shoot the Glock 17.



When I had Jade shoot the Glock 17, I only loaded 1 round into the clip and cocked it so she had only one round to fire off each time she shot it. By the way, that's me explaining to her how to shoot. I tried to get my Uncle Steve's younger brother to take some video with my Galaxy S mobile phone, but he didn't hit the stop while recording and I hit the back button when finished and it didn't save any of it, oh well. In the second movie of Jade, the spent shell casing popped up back into her face and that's why she was swiping the air. It was a new gun and even though there was only 1 round in the chamber and none in the clip, the gun didn't lock back into the empty position after firing off her round. My only thought is that is was a new gun and needed some breaking into.

It was a good and fun experience for both my wife and my daughter. And just to clarify, none of these photos or movies were taken by me.