3-light shot. The idea was to highlight the vented rib of the barrel. Original thought was to include a full view of the gun on black reflective tile, but I abandoned that and just cropped it a bit.
Gun is propped up with a bent coat hanger (cloned out in post - Photoshop), sitting on a small stand, 5 feet in front of black paper. Tape wrapped around the bottom of the hanger, sticky side out, to keep it from slipping on the tile.
The butt isn't perfectly flat, which caused the gun to want to tilt over, so I put a bit of spackling compound in a plastic bag, pressed the butt into it and let that dry. Once it dried some, I cut out the shape of the butt and placed it under it, which prevents the gun from tipping over.
I started with (trying to) get the exposure of the muzzle correct first - it needed light on it since it would show in the pic. I would take a shot with just that flash on, check it, adjust, and re-shoot. Stand mounted, with the umbrella just above and about a foot away from the muzzle. Turned that off, then adjusted the bare flash sitting on the floor. At first it was pointed at the lens and caused bad lens flare. Moved it closer so that the paper was between the lens and the flash, but the flash could still light the gun. (See pic below.)
Main light came from the 580EXII, shot through a white umbrella. Colt Royal Blue can be tough to photograph, since it's so reflective. I ended up holding the flash/umbrella in my hand and tripping the shutter with a cable release. Glance at the shot, move the main flash and try again. Most shots washed out sections of the barrel. In the one above, IIRC, the main flash was 2 or 3 feet directly over the gun. Took 50 shots, then went with the one with the least wash-out.
Canon 7D, 24mm 1.4L, 430EX flash (x2), 580-EXII flash, ST-E2 transmitter. ISO 100, f/11, 1/200, manual, RAW, spot-metered on the barrel, ETTL.