Look at most pictures, and you’ll likely see a prop in the shot. In photography, props are pretty widely used to great effect. While all that’s well and good, the danger is that props, if they’re used improperly, can bring an element of very noticeable fakeness and contrivance to your shot, almost as if the image is screaming, “I’m totally staged!”

When something doesn’t look as natural as it should, that will turn your audience off, too, so only include props in the shot if their placement is carefully thought out. One thing that contributes to a lack of natural realism in prop images is that it’s likely already been done before.

With the following tips, however, rest assured that your use of props will be well-received by your audience.

Unique Placement

Here’s a stellar tip to really change up your routine use of props. Position your props in ways that are completely unexpected to your audience. In other words, in the shot, don’t put your prop where it logically makes sense for it to go.

For example, if you position a suitcase where one expects it to go in relation to a person in the shot—carried by said person by the handle, then it’s going to be a lame prop shot. So cleverly throw a curveball at your audience to make prop use fresh. Instead, maybe have your subject sit on the suitcase! Anything that can alter the relationship of the prop to its conventional use is a winner in terms of increasing your audience’s attention.

Using Furniture

One of the most common types of props is, of course, furniture. People sit, lean and even stand on furniture, making it ubiquitous in shoots. While some may write off furniture as something boring, it actually serves a very effective purpose in photography: It can make your subject or subjects feel at ease and comfortable almost immediately because furniture is so innate to the human experience.

You have furniture at home, in the office, in school, even outside, in lawns, patios and gardens. While it is so commonplace, yes, it also affords photographers the opportunity to get more out of their subjects during a shoot. This is very helpful during a studio shoot, for instance. You can move your furniture props in and out of the scene quite efficiently, and you can get your subjects to relax more quickly, which leads to more realistic poses and composition, overall…which leads to our next tip.

Prominence

Perhaps one of the reasons that props are sometimes misused in photography is because they’re maltreated as an afterthought, placed too far in the background where they just fade into that place where the audience begins to take them for granted. Playing around with how you incorporate your props in your picture’s composition is a powerful technique to freshen up and improve the appearance of props in any shot.

Have your props proudly be a part of the storytelling in your images by allowing them some prominence and having them come in from the background.

Place your props in such a way to utilize them as an anchor, drawing in the eyes of your audience first and foremost and then guiding them to whatever follows naturally and chronologically next, like your subject. Spend extra time on studying how you’ll best place your props for maximum prominence, and you’ll elevate props in a way that’ll resonate with your audience.

Aiming for Timelessness

Timelessness is something that you don’t hear that much anymore from photographers. For an image to be timeless, it has to retain the meaning and relevance that it has today many, many years into the future. Because of this task, getting a photo to be timeless is a challenging task, indeed. That’s why you ought to be careful when using props in your images; you don’t want to date your images to the point that the audience is going to find it hard to relate or understand them in just a few years’ time. Props have a way of dating images when that doesn’t need to be the case at all.

Let’s look at an example. Let’s say that you’re taking a picture of people, and your subjects are holding tablets, have wild hairdos, and are sporting t-shirts with the latest teen celebrities on them. That’s not a very timeless image since, chances are, tablets will be replaced by something else in the future, hairdos come and go, and no one will remember the latest flash-in-the-pan teen heartthrob years later!

Another option would be to take a picture of people in a timeless setting and doing a timeless activity. Let’s say they’re on a picnic with picnic basket or at the beach with beach towels and beach balls – activities and moments that won’t ever change in the future since these are things people will probably always be doing.

Adding Color

One of the easiest elements you can add into a shot to make it more interesting and give it more contrast is the introduction of color. Any image with more vibrant color will instantly jump out at the viewer since it’s something attractive to focus on in the shot.

Props are an ideal and quick way to make color happen in your frame. Does your subject feel all alone, thus contributing to a dull shot? Splash in some color by introducing various props: a bright umbrella, a colorful car, a vibrant piece of furniture, a soaring kite in the near background, etc.

Props to Enhance Your Photos

The goal is to have any prop you include in a shot improve your picture. Sometimes, photographers just include props left and right without really focusing on how they contribute or subtract from the shot.

When we take a hard, strong look at the role of props in our shots, we can see that they can have a positive effect to improve the viewer’s experience of the image, but that can only happen when we spend a bit of time thinking about the best ways to use these props.