The Value of Props in Photographs

One thing I'm learning myself--the value of "props" in photographs. This photo I took almost 2 years ago illustrates this. (Moreover, the subject, a 7 year old child, actually helped me in that regard--how embarrassing, ha ha.)

Click to enlarge
(20100801_154151_nl_c_lr3_d40)

I am learning this myself--props give some "character" to an otherwise everyday photo. They give it a sense of spice, and in some cases they can even speak about some aspects of the personality of the subject you're shooting. In this case, the subject, our nephew, happens to love watermelons, and we had him on an outing near Tyler Lake State Park and there was a watermelon stand in someone's yard nearby. We stopped by and he and the others really enjoyed it very much.

While doing so, I decided to just take a "casual click" of the event to commemorate it. My nephew saw the watermelons & had the idea himself to pose on them in this way, and "hammed it up" for my Nikon D40 kit. What a brilliant idea--from a 7-year old!

The watermelons in this picture (a) remind us of this adventure (b) stress the awareness of our nephew being a huge fan of watermelons and (c) just plain "spice" up the photograph and make it more interesting.

I would say that a photo does not NEED such a "prop" to make it a good photo, many "plain" photographs without props can still be great photographs. However, photos like this say to me that one would be well served at times to search out props if possible and see, you just never know what they can do to spice up your photographs!

And heck, in this case, it was a 7-year old kid (our nephew) who helped me be aware of this.