A couple of weeks ago, I posted a somewhat humorous (I thought) ode to my favorite stock “props”. The items I find myself using more than a few times. Today, it’s the opposite. Oh, why did I spend money on these for one use?
First off, it’s the “food scale”. I bought it to stand in for something a jeweler might use to weigh gold at a house party. While that may certainly be a legitimate use, I haven’t used it again. Oh, I guess I could do a series on dieting and keeping track of food calories, but I haven’t been inspired to. Yet.
Then we have “the credit card”. Useful in many situations, but an ultimate pain to shoot and edit so it isn’t recognizable as any specific brand. Which is why I made myself a custom gift card that looked like any other credit. Which I then lost. And it had $10 loaded onto it (the minimum). Which is why I hate credit cards.
So, I had an idea for a series using stanchions and velvet ropes, in studio, on white. However, when I got them from the rental place, the velvet ropes were like 8 feet long, and my shooting area wasn’t big enough to use those without it looking really silly. So, I ran to the fabric store, bought velvet fabric and foam, and my wife and I spent the event rolling our own ropes, about 3 feet long. Then I had to unscrew the end hooks from the long ones and put them on the short ones. In the end, they looked great, but now I have five velvet “ropes” with no end hanging on my shelf because I don’t want to throw them out for all the work they took.
It’s always bugged me that I spent $200 on this costume, but I never came up with any other use for it. I don’t know any guys that look like Sherlock Holmes, so it would be difficult to use it in a “realistic” setting. For this, though, it worked fine, and I’ve probably made my money back. Still, there it sits on my rack.
Lastly, this baby bottle. Another one-time use. I mean, how many uses are there for a giant plastic bottle? It was good for this, and not too costly, so I don’t feel too badly. I just see it on my shelf and grimace.
So, there are some of my least favorite props that are sitting in my studio. There’s probably a few more I could list as well – the plastic grass sections, the small cabinet from Wal-mart, the pinata … Which reminds me. I have some Cinco De Mayo image to go shoot. Have a good week!
