Portraits with Christmas Guns
Dec 30, 2015
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Gun ownership is a pretty heated topic these days, but apparently guns and ammunition are popular Christmas gifts among gun supporters.
Hearing how many people show up at the firing range the day after Christmas to try out their new weapons, Fstoppers’ Patrick Hall set out to capture portraits of Americans enjoying their Christmas guns.
Patrick shared with Fstoppers readers how the shoot came to be:
“The concept for this shoot manifested itself a few weeks ago while I was celebrating a friend’s birthday party. A few acquaintances started talking about guns and a friend of mine said: “well, you definitely don’t want to go out to the firing range the day after Christmas because it is filled with tons of rednecks shooting guns they gave each other.” I had a little laugh when she told us her personal experience from the year before, and it made me start to think that maybe there was a really unique opportunity to document one of America’s favorite pasttimes.”
Despite most gun owners I’ve met being very proud and outspoken about their guns, Patrick said that of the 150 or so people that attended the range during the five hours he spent there only 20% of them agreed to take part in the photo shoot.
Using a giant USA flag, a fog machine, and minimal posing, Patrick set up in the woods near the range and captured some fascinating portraits of new and seasoned shooters. The type of people who showed up varied greatly, as did the weapons – ranging from 9mm handguns to a 50-caliber anti-tank rifle, in pink and with jewels no less.
“My goal with these portraits wasn’t to take any particular side in that argument,” Patrick concluded the shoot. “Instead, I just wanted to capture the diverse group of gun owners from every walk of life, as they enjoyed their hobby following Christmas.”
Liron Samuels
Liron Samuels is a wildlife and commercial photographer based in Israel. When he isn’t waking up at 4am to take photos of nature, he stays awake until 4am taking photos of the night skies or time lapses. You can see more of his work on his website or follow him on Facebook.
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19 responses to “Portraits with Christmas Guns”
So disgusting.
Before you label it disgusting, do yourself a favor, click through to the link, and actually watch the video. The number one uniting factor among people who oppose firearms ownership is a lack of experience with them. If you want to genuinely oppose something, take some time and learn about it first. Believing with your feelings is the lazy way out.
You know that they get their information directly for uninformed newscasters right? LOL.
Only thing I see “so disgusting” here is the lack of trigger discipline some of his subjects exhibit.
Of all the images in the video, not one person had a finger on the trigger.
0:17 & 2:53
In the video there are 2 definitely, first was the guy in green with the AR with the drum mag, the kneeling blue hat guy (not 100 percent sure though) and the guy with the AR on the left of the split screen toward the end of the video.
YES!
If you really want to do a photo shoot on railroad tracks, have the discipline to locate decommissioned rails.
If you are going to photo shoot with fire arms, keep the discipline to handle them correctly. Even **gasp** at the cost of the aesthetic of the portrait.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhnUgAaea4M
Does anyone else think subject aside, that these portraits are complete garbage?
Yeah…they are horrible…lol
Great idea for a shoot. I’ve been shooting for 30 years, and all I have met are good folks. Nice to see all the AR 15s out there! I don’t bother with them though as the AR 10 is more to my liking :)
Silly Americans…
Long live the country with mass gun shootings… retarded poeple…
so much hate you have
so America -.-
There’s a difference between gun ownership and gun worship. This is the latter.
Bingo.