Flash Bang

When photographing people shooting auto loading pistols, one always hopes to get some dramatic brass-in-the-air shots. With revolvers, getting a chance dramatic range photo is a lot trickier, but it happens sometimes.

That's Chuck Haggard shooting 158gr .38 Special from a Ruger LCR. Lee Weems of First Person Safety was teaching his Revolver Essentials class and saw Chuck walking by and pulled him in to demonstrate the grip he uses on small snubbies for recoil control*. It appears that his recoil control game is on point.

*It's basically a "c-clamp" grip, with the firing hand holding the gun high on the backstrap, and the support hand wrapped around the firing hand, thumb over the top, in a crush grip.

.

Meaningful Moments

As I mentioned earlier, while I was at TacCon, I had a personal side quest...

Massad Ayoob and Chuck Haggard

I had thirty exposures left on my last roll of (now discontinued) Fujicolor Pro 400h, a color negative film meant for portrait work, and I meant to use them to capture images of my friends there. Having a finite number of exposures, and an actual fiscal cost associated with each press of the shutter button, made me think carefully about when and why I pulled the camera out of the bag.

Sarah & Jon Hauptman

It was kind of funny having to be so careful with those last frames, because the the camera with the film in it was an EOS-1N, the penultimate 35mm Canon pro body. With the battery pack "power booster" on it, it'd shoot six frames a second, burning up those last thirty exposures of Fuji 400h in a quick count of "five Mississippi".

John Johnston

When I got home, I couldn't wait to get the film down to Roberts for processing. In the interim, I discovered that I had one last roll of 400h squirreled away that I hadn't seen, back those weeks ago when I'd heard it was being discontinued.

I ain't mad about slowing down and making those thirty exposures count for something. Now I get to do it thirty-six more times.

Carrying in comfort...

I hear an awful lot about how it's impossible to sit down while carrying a pistol in the appendix position, or to drive while carrying anywhere inside the waistband. This is never not amusing to me because I haven’t taken a roadtrip without wearing a pistol in an IWB holster since Saddam Hussein still had a house to call his own.

This trip to and from TacCon was no exception. Last Wednesday evening I drove the Zed Drei from Indianapolis to the exurbs of Cincinnati, which is a short hop of only a little over two hours, and then Thursday morning John Johnston and I departed for Dallas in his Honda Passport. That’s an interstate slog about fifteen hours long. Then we repeated it in the other direction on Monday.

I was carrying the pistol and holster I’m carrying every day and everywhere this year: the FN 509 Compact MRD with a Trijicon SRO optic and Streamlight TLR-7 light in a Henry Holsters Spark light-bearing rig, strong-side at about the 3:30 position. I was carrying that because I believe that rather than having an array of guns and holsters for special instances, it’s best to find a gun you run well and a holster you can wear in comfort, and use that same combination of gun and holster as much as possible. I don’t have a "Sunday gun" or a "roadtrip holster"; I just have my carry gun and my carry holster, and I carry them.

Meanwhile, John has just spent every bit of thirty hours driving halfway across the country and back with a Glock 45, complete with optic, WML, comp, and a spare 24-round magazine, in a Dark Star Gear Rigel attached to the PHLster light-bearing Enigma AIWB rig. Better than that, he was wearing yoga pants on the way out and sweat pants on the return voyage. 

The Enigma really is something all future-y, like from science fiction, since it divorces the ride height of your AIWB pistol from the waistband height of your pants, which is the single biggest comfort issue with appendix carry.

Visible in this picture: John Johnston
Not visible in this picture: comp'ed G45, Holosun 507, Surefire X300, spare 24-rd magazine

The above photo was, according to my iPhone, snapped somewhere just this side of Texarkana on the return trip, by which point we'd already been on the road several hours.

The Enigma is no barrier to adequate performance on the draw, either, as John's performance in the match proved. In the main match he placed eighth overall in a competitive field that included shooters like Gabe White and Scott "Jedi" Jedlinski, and in the 16-shooter man-on-man finals, he made it into the second round before getting eliminated by the dude who would wind up finishing second. And John was in basketball shorts.

JJRG in the process of winning the first bout

Always Be Learning

John and Vicki Farnam at TacCon 2021

John and Vicki are legends in the training industry. Defense Training International was one of the first of the traveling training programs and they're still out there doing their thing.

All weekend at TacCon I saw John and Vicki either on the line in other instructors' classes or standing back and observing. This is a good sign in my book.

.

Made it home!

Wheels down safely in Indianapolis. My email inbox is probably a disaster area, my luggage is still in the car, and my office chair feels like it's doing ten over, but all this can be sorted out.

Bobbi and the cats were glad to see me and Holden let me pick him up and cuddle him. I've done a lot of peopleing over the last couple days, and even though it was with my favorite people on the planet, this is still a thing...

Focus and Composition

I've just spent the weekend wandering around at TacCon with a camera... well, not a camera, but rather a pair of cameras. A way to avoid losing time switching lenses and maybe getting dirt on the sensor is to have two bodies ready to go. 

I wanted a camera handy that was set up for whatever shot might pop up by surprise...

I wandered TacCon with the Canon 5DS wearing the 24-105mm f/4L and Canon 5D Mark II with the 70-200mm f/2.8L around my neck. I had a couple other lenses in the bag over my shoulder just in case, but also in the bag was my EOS 1N with a roll of Fuji 400h. My last roll of Fuji 400h.

Knowing I only had twenty-something shots left on that roll of film really put the brakes on when and why I pulled it out of the bag.