Battle reenactment

I admire photographer's courage.

This guy has no head!

Cool shot, nice capture.

9 out of 10 for capturing the scene. 1 out of 10 for picture quality.

"1 out of 10 for picture quality"

What's wrong with the picture quality?

this picture made my day! The best picture forthe year. Completely hilarious! Congratulations to Erin Sanchez for the fun pic. If something has improved in Japantday, this is the photosection, it is more diverse and interesting.

the old gun sure does give off a decent flash.

What happened to his head?

As recreations go, this looks lame. America has the best battle recreations in the world. Especially the Civil War and Revolutionary War (against the perfidious Brits).

America has the best battle recreations in the world.

No it doesn't.

Yeah, uh. Seen the European WW2 re-enactments where they bring, like Panzers? I think that pretty much trumps US Civil War...

ah well Americans think they have the best everything, go figure. If its a re-enactment, its not competing with other battles, but trying to acurately depict one particular battle. I like the photo, the gun flash is cool, and yeh, that dude totally has no head!!

Any realistic replay of Kawanakajima should have a lot of headless guys...

When the matchcord touches the priming powder in the pan, most of the force of the blackpowder explosion pushes the main charge out of the barrel. At the same time, depending on the size of the touch hole, quite a pillar of flame and smoke blows back up from the pan. In this case it looks as though the wind has blown it back to cover him.

If you were to criticize the gunners there, you'd have to say that the near one is holding the gun dangerously low. The far one is trying to fix the matchcord to the serpentine, but he doesn't seem to know what he is doing.

To give them their due, it takes quite a bit of courage to fire one of these Tanegashima matchlocks.

The human version of the M-119 Palladin self propelled artillery gun. Let 'er rip, buddy boy. But steel down range. PAHFOOOOOM. Gung ho. For emperor & country. Burn som powder & make some noise. Boy, I bet these jobs really lit up the area at night. I bet his ears're a-ringin'! General George (Patton) would be proud.

Strictly speaking not a rifleman as rifling had not yet been invented. A musketeer, an arquebusier, an artilleryman or just a plain gunner might be closer. They should really wear earplugs, but then they wouldn't hear the captain's orders. 射手"shashu" (shooter) or uchite in Japanese.

puff puff... I sort of think the picture looks cool. Poor artilleryman didn't get his close-up.

Reminds me of the scene in Kagemusha when the musketeer described how he triangulated his gun on the spot where the enemy leader would sit and then shot him in the dark using a plumb bob and some pebbles to align his gun. Nice photo.