I have struggled with taking decent pictures of any of my guns, and continue to do so. Here's what I have learned (some echo earlier comments):
- Good lighting is the most important thing. Photography is the process of capturing light, after all. The best lighting will be outside in bright but not direct light, or inside with "studio" lighting of some kind (which for small objects like handguns can be an small and inexpensive "light tent"). Flash will probably not make a good picture.
- Background is also very important. Most of the really nice gun pictures I have seen have a nice background. Most people don't have anything in their house that will do the job.
- For good results posting photos for discussion boards, you can use a service like PhotoBucket as others have mentioned, or just post them directly on the discussion board (which is what I do). I had PhotoShop years ago, but for this type of photo you don't need anything that fancy or expensive. I just open the photo in Window Photo Viewer, then "edit" it in Microsoft Office Picture Manager or similar to 1. crop off any excess, 2. resize to fewer pixels, and then 3. compress the image moderately. Doing this I can still usually post "large" photos that look good (except for my photography).
My efforts have been modest at best, and I always admire those who can produce really high-quality photos.
