What Is "Prop Styling" Anyways?!
(Banner image styled and shot by Lindsay Bottos for Prop Up Shop; Author: Liz Watt, Editing By: Limonata Creative)
Have you ever found yourself in awe scrolling past beautiful image after beautiful image on the Instagram profiles of brands you love, or maybe flipping through the glossy pages of a magazine and thinking, “wow, how do they get these perfect shots?!”.
The objects in each photos seem to fit together perfectly as though they were made for each other, even if they couldn’t be more different; tea sets and tubes of lipstick, a bottle of hand sanitizer and a block of wood, the combinations are endless, but how do you choose?! How do you determine what objects work best? Where do you find them? And most importantly, how do you pull them all together to tell the perfect visual story?
This, all of it, is prop styling.
Becoming A Prop Stylist
When you’re dreaming up potential futures for yourself as a kid – do I want to be an astronaut? a doctor? a painter? a ballerina? – “prop stylist” is probably not a career that comes to mind for most people. It just simply is not a very well-known, or well talked about, career path. The good news is that there is no one-size-fits-all path to take if you want a career in prop styling.
For me, it started at the age of 10 when a family friend gifted me her old Vogue and W magazines. The stunning images and the stories the photographs told about each brand--I was hooked. “Amazing!” I thought. “People can make art through images!” But it wasn’t a straight line from obsessing over photos in magazines to styling the photoshoots myself. There were stops in public relations, gallery management, and wine sales, to name a few along the way. Finding my “niche” took a lot of time, and a lot of trial and error.
Throughout all this change, a few things have remained consistent. I’ve always been in love with creating with my own hands, and I’ve been collecting all my life. With a background in fine art, I have an eye for rare, antique, luxury items, but I’m also a thrifter. I could spend hours treasure hunting in unexpected places--even trash piles.
These skills came majorly in handy when I decided to take the plunge, combine my passions and start my business -- Limonata Creative -- an art direction and prop & set styling consultancy. As a stylist, I found myself constantly on the hunt for more and more objects for shoots. I even started creating my own backgrounds and surfaces.
Photo of PROP UP SHOP SURFACES by Kate Grewal
But things quickly got a bit out of hand. I was stashing piles and piles of hundreds of props in the basement of our Baltimore rowhome. If you’re picturing rows and rows of shelving units packed full of vases, glassware, plates stacked so high you’d need a stepladder to reach the top, you’re basically envisioning our basement. Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit, but not by much...
No Props? No Problem!
But not everyone has their own personal arsenal of hundreds of photoshoot-ready objects and backdrops in their basement to dip into whenever they need to create new images. And nor should they! Who has the time to run around to various antique stores, thrift shops, or local retailers to dig up the perfect items each and every time you need new images? And, often more importantly, who has the budget to be able to purchase and keep non-returnable objects that may never be used again beyond that one photoshoot? All of these are very standard challenges plaguing the creative community, making it difficult to do the one thing that we all love to do: create. The good news? These burdens just got so much lighter.
Enter: Prop Up Shop, Baltimore’s very own prop house and studio! A breakthrough resource for Baltimore and the greater DC/Maryland/Virginia (aka DMV) area, Prop Up Shop’s expertly curated collection of hundreds of tabletop & decorative objects, surfaces, and backdrops allows you to spend less time on the road sourcing, while simultaneously providing a beautiful and professional space to shoot your work.
Photo of PROP UP SHOP by Justin Tsucalas
Our collection includes a mix of modern, rustic, vintage, handmade ceramic & artisanal wares. The collection is as diverse as it is because I know firsthand how challenging finding props, surfaces, and even the right studio space can be in the Baltimore/DC area. We have such a thriving, beautiful community of creatives but not many resources to prop them up...see what I did there?
With Prop Up Shop, I wanted to create a haven for our creative community--stylists, designers, chefs, bloggers, photographers, artists, you name it! A space that helps make their work look its best and takes so much of the hassle out of photographing it; everything you need is right at your fingertips.
Photo of PROP UP SHOP by Justin Tsucalas
Styling Step-By-Step
Whether you are a professional stylist working in the industry, or someone who enjoys arranging things and snapping photos as a fun hobby, whenever you curate objects and arrange them with intention, you are prop styling. But there is so much more that goes into professional prop styling than meets the eye.
Before a photoshoot, before arranging each item *just so* for the perfect shot, you need to have a solid understanding of the story you’re trying to convey with the images. What is the vibe you’re trying to capture, what message are you sharing with the audience? Who is your audience? These are all questions that are asked and answered in the conceptualization phase--that comes first.
Understanding the “look” a client wants to achieve when styling their brand, interior, or product is just as important as the photoshoot itself, if not more important. The items you bring and use on set create the visual story a brand wants to convey to potential customers when shooting images of their products. Communication, with everything, is key, and a picture’s worth 1,000 words, right?
Photo of PROP UP SHOP by Justin Tsucalas
“Mood boarding” helps you visually map this out. Finding inspiration from photographers, identifying the color theme for the shoot, and pulling together images that have a consistent theme in common that you want to emulate in your own images is a great first step in getting organized. This process is the perfect jumping off point to prop sourcing. What objects do you need to find in order to achieve the look/vibe/mood you’ve identified in your mood board? What colors are you looking for? Do you need barware? Home decor? Furniture? Where can you find all these things? What kind of background will you photograph them against? Do you need to find a studio in which to shoot these photos or should you rent out a space with a more home-y feel?
If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed just by reading this, trust me, I can relate. It is not easy to pull together everything you need when sourcing for a shoot, especially if you’re on a time crunch or working with a limited budget. For creators that live in places like NYC, this is where prop houses often come into play--spaces where folks can come and rent props, backdrops, surfaces, pretty much anything they’d need to create beautiful images. In the DMV, we really don’t have anything like that. Until now, that is.
Photo of PROP UP SHOP by Justin Tsucalas
Like having a prop house in your basement, but better!
Prop Up Shop is Baltimore’s first prop house for photo and video productions, and we are so thrilled to be here!! Before Prop Up Shop, it could take anyone, even a seasoned stylist, days or weeks to source the ideal props and surfaces they’d need for a shot (and don’t even get us started on the post-shoot returns!).
Now, we’ve combined an expansive and diverse collection of everything ranging from bath, beauty, and fashion accessories; to art and home decor; to kitchen and barware and everything in between, and it all lives in one beautiful studio in Baltimore City. A studio that you can not only rent props from, but you can shoot in the space itself. Truly a one-stop-shop for everything you’d need, Prop Up Shop also has a shoot space available for small-scale product, food, fashion, and lifestyle photoshoots. And it gets even better: when you rent a day’s worth of props, surfaces, and/or photoshoot equipment, you’ll also have access to our shooting studio--for free!
Photo of PROP UP SHOP by Justin Tsucalas
With new props added weekly, our collection of modern, rustic, vintage, handmade ceramic and artisanal wares just keeps growing, and we can’t wait to share it with you! Let us help you showcase your amazing talent--reach out to us to learn more about rentals, we’d love to connect!
We are so excited to be a part of this amazing creative community in Baltimore and beyond and we can’t wait to see what you’ll create next at Prop Up Shop!
