I wonder whether it simultaneously fired a live round.
If so, it might have had some use in self-defense. Maybe. But if so, it could easily have tended toward a fatal accident when used as a camera by someone who “knew” the gun “wasn’t loaded.”
And if not... rather a dangerous way to take photos.
If it was loaded, the shooter wasn’t worth spit, doesn’t look like he hit the guy in any of the six shots.
“... rather a dangerous way to take photos.”
The revolver in the image is not a Colt, but a Smith & Wesson. Likely a Military & Police Model of 1905, Fourth Change.
The hole in the front of the ejector rod locking plunger stud can be seen. S&W arms of the period (probably pre-1945) all sported a locking plunger at the forward tip of the ejector rod; No Colt’s revolver ever sported one.
If it were indeed a Colt, one could see the head of the rod.
The poster may have meant that the revolver chambered 38 Colt; many S&W revolvers were so chambered, as the cartridge was the US War Dept’s standard handgun cartridge from 1892 to 1911. It also did duty with the US Navy and was issued as a backup (”substitute standard”) into the 1920s.
Before the nation’s armed forces were unified in 1947, the Army (War Dept) & Navy were not required to use a common-design small arms cartridge (except by ad hoc occasional Congressional Statute, or periodic preference. The separate services maintained completely separate ordnance departments, developed completely different small arms and cartridges, and only occasionally used each other’s weaponry. The Navy often allowed the Army to take the lead (and allow the War Dept to absorb the cost & time & effort of development), then adopted an identical piece of hardware. That’s how it proceeded with the Model 1911 pistol: early ones were marked “Model of 1911 U.S. Army”, and only after some years of production did the Navy Ordnance Bureau buy pistols marked “Model of 1911 U.S. Navy.”