Props of 2025

Hello everyone and Happy Monday!

This week I wanted to talk about props! Using props can be really effective in model photography and can help break out of a rut in your photography. I often suggest to people that they have a few small props in their camera bag that they can bring out if things are feeling a bit stale during a shoot. There are no rules about what the prop can or should be, so you can get creative with it.

One of my favourite props of all time was when a photographer (and I can't remember for the life of me who this was, so apologies if it's you and I'm not giving you the credit for it... it was a very long time ago) just pulled out a blank letter and said, 'pretend to read this, it can be a letter about anything you want'. It was such a great tool because it instantly throws you back into the creative mindset: What is the letter saying? Who is it from? Who am I as the recipient of the letter? What does this letter make me feel? Your mind spirals with the possibilities from one simple prop, and for those five minutes or so, you're suddenly exploring something completely different to whatever you were shooting before. It was a wonderful idea and it's stuck with me all these years later.

So yeah, props can be really powerful. They can also easily become ridiculous or overused too, so I'd take care with them. But I still maintain that a few well thought out props can really make a difference to an image.

I was initially going to go back through my entire portfolio and find the best props I've ever used... But that seemed like way too big of a task for right now (maybe I'll do that over winter when things are quieter). Instead, I settled on a post featuring props I used last year for now. That seemed like a much more manageable thing to do!

So let's jump in and take a look at some of the props I used in 2025.

White Material

A staple item for any model or photographer's bag should be a floaty bit of lightweight material in any colour. You can use if for so many different styles of photography and it can add a little something extra to a shot, especially in art nude photography.

Me and Dave often give it as an option on workshops to show people how versatile your photography can become with a few little things to add some variety, like these shots by Tom Swallow and Rhianne Lousie, both taken on our workshops:

As a side note, a white shirt can give a similar (although less versatile effect) like this image below by Dave Edkins:

Fans and Beads

Things like fans and beads don't take up much space in your camera bag and it can really add to your posing if things are feeling a bit flat. Beads in particular are great because your model can play with them, so it brings their hands into shot more. Fans are cool because you can play around with positioning it to obscure parts of the face as well as just holding it. Here are a couple of images from workshops, one by Dave Edkins and one by Rhianne Louise:

Hats

I always say that I'm not a hat person unless it's a snapback... But I do rock a hat from time to time on shoots. Hats can completely change the vibe of a photo so they're a good thing to bring along as a model or a photographer. Like these images below from Mick Szabo and MCCCXIV Photography:

Lenses, Filters and Prisms

Bringing a few weird lenses, lens filters, lens balls, prisms or anything like that can be a lot of fun on a shoot. They're often quite experimental and silly, so you're unlikely to want to spend too much time using them on any shoot, but they can be a fun little thing to mess around with, and you can end up with some really interesting images, like this one below from Dave Edkins:

Glow Sticks

In my shoots with Dave Edkins for the last year or so, we have done a lot of experimenting with light painting. It's been a fun little project of ours that I look forward to continuing as we work to figuring out just what you can do and how to achieve certain effects.

One of my favourite shots from these so far is the one with glow sticks that we got in September (below), but we've created some amazing and varied images just using torches and LED lights in different ways and combinations to get some wildly abstract images. This won't work on location by the way, so this is really just a studio prop but it can look so cool with a bit of imagination and a willingness to take a load of bad images in the process:

Smoke Bombs

Definitely don't try to set of smoke bombs in a studio. as it may result in you being asked not to come back, but these are a great thing to bring along with you on location shoots. They can be pretty tricky to get right, especially as you're often working with wind that will change direction the second you set the smoke bomb off, but it's so worth playing around with, because you can get some stunning images, like these ones from Mick Szabo and MCCCXIV Photography:

Cocoon

Obviously the cocoon has to be mentioned in here. I've done a few posts about it so far and will without a doubt be doing more because it's a super cool and very effective prop. It's small and lightweight so it's easy to bring along with you to shoots, and it works well on location as well as in the studio. Here are the links to the two posts I've done about the cocoon so far: one with Dave Edkins and one with MCCCXIV. Here are a couple of images from each to remind you:

Paper

You can literally use anything as a prop. In a shoot I did with Dave Edkins at the end of last year, we used paper from Amazon packaging to create a wonderful set that we were both really proud of. You can take a read of that post by clicking here.

Holidays

Obviously Halloween and Christmas shoots in particular call for a lot of props, and I won't talk about them too much in this post as I posted a lot of these shots in my blog around that time of year, but I'll just drop a few of my favourites below for you to take a look at!

Blood, tape, hooded capes and cobwebs/spiders for Halloween taken by Dave Edkins. And baubles, gift boxes and fairy lights for Christmas by Rhianne Lousie.

Also...

If you can't be bothered with carrying props around, you can always just print off some silly nonsense and call it a day, like Scott (MCCCXIV Photography) did for our shoot last November:

I hope you've enjoyed having a look through some of the props I used in 2025, and feel free to leave a comment with some of your favourite props to use.

The next subscriber post is coming out on Wednesday so if you aren't already a member of MAGIC, MOMENTS, or MUSE, then sign up! The first lot of subscriber gifts went out last week, which was pretty exciting: you get bits of Misuzu merch if you're a subscriber (incase you needed another reason to sign up!)

Anyway, I hope you have a beautiful week ahead of you!

Love Misuzu x