Unless you have studio lights available to you, I recommend using daylight whenever possible. Sunlight is more intense and consistent than artificial light. Unfortunately, undiffused sunlight is harsh, causing hard shadows and numerous distracting specular highlights. Specular highlights are extremely bright pin-point reflections of undiffused light sources: they always burn out, often causing lens flare. A single specular highlight, such as a catchlight in a person’s eye is good to have. Numerous highlights make pictures appear busy and unprofessional. One way to solve that problem is to take photographs on overcast days. Another is to place a piece of white cardboard or foam core on the shadow side of the gun in order to bounce light. The simplest way to achieve this is to place the subject flat on the background, bend the reflector so it stands by itself and point the camera straight down.

Because we are used to seeing guns upright, always make sure that the main light is from the top of the gun. This means that if you are photographing a pistol on the table and its grip is towards you, then the main light should be on the opposite side from you.

If a blued firearm is photographed on a dark background, or a stainless gun on white, it may blend in too much, With dark guns, the problem is exacerbated if undiffused light casts harsh shadows. To get around this problem, use contrasting backgrounds. For example, a gray dog blanket works well for stainless and blued guns alike. Using neutral backgrounds has the added advantage of avoiding color casts on the subject. In order to diffuse the shadows cast by the guns, you may wish to raise them above the background. Generally, two cartridge boxes or three shotgun shells provide enough stability and sufficient distance to diffuse the cast shadow. The gun itself hides the supports from the lens.

If you do not have a background that is large enough for the firearm being photographed, as may be the case with rifles, you can still make the background appear unobtrusive. Set the subject as far away from the backdrop as possible and use a telephoto lens set to a wide aperture. That will throw the background out of focus and make the gun stand out.

If you must depict movement, setting a slow shutter speed and moving the camera with the subject works well. That is called panning. Focus, then follow a subject moving parallel to the film plane: the person would come out fairly sharp, the background would streak. Make sure that you follow the subject throughout the exposure even if the viewfinder blacks out. Using flash (in slow-synch mode) makes the subject sharper but does not materially affect the background. Practice this technique before using it on important assignments.

• Obscured detail, poor modeling of shapes
• Inaccurate color balance
• Glare from the background

• Soft light reflects in the slide, bringing out the detail of polished parts
• Hard light rakes the object from left to right to bring out the grip texture
• A reflector held below separates the bottom of the frame from the shadow beneath it.

All firearms consists of either matte parts, polished parts or both. The challenge is to light both in such a way that the photographs would contain detail rather than featureless shadows and burned-out highlights.

Polished slides, sides of triggers and barrels are all examples of highly reflective subjects. The best mental analogy to use when working with them is a mirror. A mirror is only as bright as what it reflects. That means a pistol slide which reflects the sky would come out light and bluish in color, whereas one that reflects a dark backdrop would come black and featureless. Generally, guns look best if they reflect either diffuse lights (sky or studio softboxes) or light objects around them. When taking photos of a dark reflective weapon, you may wish to surround it with foam core or white paper towels just out of the view of the camera. Doing that would lighten the edges and keep them from blending into the background.

Other parts of firearms, such as textured grips or parkerized receivers are matte. When lit with a diffuse light source, such as an overcast sky, they show little texture or detail. Direct sunlight or undiffused flash would bring out the detail in such parts – at the cost of hard shadows under the gun and burned-out highlights on reflective parts.

Obviously, the only way to have both types of light in the same photo is by using artificial light or a combination of daylight and flash or daylight-balanced floodlight. When setting up a shot, compose it first. Then position the diffuse light source and adjust the objects or the camera position so that it reflects as you want it to reflect in the polished parts of the subject. Outside of a studio, your diffuse light would probably be the sky or a large window. Next, place your hard light so that it points at the diffuse parts. Now adjust the angle of that light so that it does not reflect from the subject into the lens.

A simple setup of this kind can be done by placing a gun in front of a window. The window would reflect in the metal parts and keep them bright. Next, you would place a floodlight to the left or to the right of the gun and point it at an oblique angle to the subject, almost perpendicular to the lens. That would bring out matte textures strongly yet cause little flare or specular highlights. Because some shiny parts, such as bolt handle knobs, are spherical, it may be impossible to avoid extra highlights entirely.
The last step is to look at the composition and make sure that the gun doesn’t blend into the background. If it does, add reflector cards or mirrors to add light to the affected areas: you might wish to affect either the gun itself or the background, depending on the situation.

Now take the photo. If you are using a digital camera, review the image critically. If something isn’t perfect, the time to fine-tune your set-up and re-take the picture is when you already have everything in place.

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