Sorry it’s been so quiet lately. A few different things had cropped up and… well, you know how it is.

I’m always keen to try different types of photography and over the last few months have been lucky enough to try a lot of different things (portraits, street shots, landscapes, night photography, HDR, the list goes on). A lot of the opportunities have come about by talking with people about their hobbies, telling them about mine and generally trying to be a good bloke. It’s always worth asking friends with interesting hobbies if you can tag along, you might get a great photo or even a great new hobby too.

A few weeks back, I was lucky enough to be invited by a work friend to a local rifle club to take some pictures. It was an excellent experience and I’ll share some of those pictures here over the next few days. In the meantime, he has my thanks!

This is a cropped close up of the barrel of a rifle – I don’t have the details of the weapon to hand – they’re not really important in this context.

It’s a good example of the ‘beauty in the eye’ type thing. I like the shot for the shallow depth of field, the reflections and the little marks showing the gun has had some use. The friend who owns the gun immediately commented on the hexagonal pattern around the barrel. Where I saw a nice image, he saw abrasions proving the rifling is pretty accurate apart from maybe a small throw to one side.

(Oh, for those of you scanning my images for signs of sensor dirt – keep it up! But you’re wasting your time here (I hope!), this image would have had the dirty marks cropped out).