3 of Our Favorite Photography Tools

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We recently talked about the importance of having a healthy mindset when troubleshooting and why you should set aside time to shoot for fun. If you’re not taking the time to create projects for yourself, you might not get as many opportunities to discover new tools that could be helpful for your process. T

roubleshooting during a client shoot is completely normal. But how great would it be to make the shoot go by even smoother if you had practiced concepts you weren’t totally sure about beforehand and discovered that a certain way or tool could help you achieve them in a quicker manner. I’m not sure about you guys but I know that if I can find something that helps me do my job better, I am 100% on board with it.

With that said, we wanted to share 3 of our favorite photography tools that have helped us create the work we do today, including all of our gifs, floating shots, and balancing scenes. We’re talking specifically about mounting putty, fishing line, and helping hands. Now some of these tools you might already know of. Heck, you might even have a couple of these laying around your house.

The thing that cracks me up the most about some of the tools product photographers use for shoots is that they’re likely products meant for something completely different and yet somehow they’ve come to be toolkit musts for commercial photographers. Anyway, if you don’t happen to know about these items, stick around because I may just change your life right now. I mean, maybe, maybe not but here we go anyway. (Haha!)

Mounting Putty

This tool was one of those things we immediately purchased for our photo toolkit when we first started Weekend Creative two years ago. Most people use putty for mounting photos or artwork on the wall. Product photographers, on the other hand, use it to help prop up small objects that won’t stand up on their own.

Typically you only have to use a small amount at once and since it doesn’t leave any kind of residue, you can reuse it over and over again. I honestly think we still have the same putty we’ve had since we started. Putty can also be incredibly useful for when you’re shooting a cylinder object that won’t stay still.

For example, we’re always using putty to stop wine bottles or beverages from rolling away when laid flat on a table. See below for how we used putty to make these pair of JINS glasses to face upward for this flatlay shot and later removed in post. If you ask us, it’s probably the best 2 dollars we’ve ever spent, haha! You can find putty pretty much at any office or hardware store. We personally use the 3M Scotch removable mounting putty.

Fishing Line (or monofilament)

Ok so this is the tool I was talking about that I just find hilarious. I mean unless you’re into fishing and you’re also a photographer, I don’t see why you would have fishing line laying around. Surprisingly enough though, it’s probably one of the best ways to get your product or item to look like it’s floating or balancing on top of something. Fishing line is clear and very thin which doesn’t show up too much in photographs and when it does, it’s very easy to retouch.

Most of the time, you can either tie it around the object or tape it behind the prop if it’s light enough. We often like to use our trusty c-stands to tie the fishing line onto and then tape it down for extra security. You can also find this tool at pretty much any hardware store and shouldn’t cost you more than 6/7 bucks for a small roll that should last you quite a while. If you’re curious, this is the brand that we use. See below for a little BTS on how we used fishing line for this levitating shot.

Helping Hands (or third hands)

Helping hands, aka third hands, are these awesome little tools that have been super fun to play with since we discovered how to use them in our shoots this past year. We always noticed BTS shots of other photographers using them on their set and I was really curious to find out how I could get my HANDS on some of these things. See what I did there… haha!

So naturally I took to Instagram to see if anyone recognized these tools and lucky for us, our friend Cheryl who is a jewelry maker pointed out that they were called helping hands. She mentioned that they were super useful for soldering and craft work. Several other friends also gave me their suggestions which included "third hands,” “gooseneck clamps,” and “snake clamps.” I finally had some searchable words to go off of and I was quickly able to find what I was looking for.

We ordered a few different helping hands and some magnetic weights from Amazon and were stoked to be able to play around with them. These third hands are really great for a number of things including gifs and floating scenes. Since they’re adjustable and small, they’re really easy to remove in post as long as they don’t interfere with the prop or object.

Below is a quick example of how we suspended this bottle lid in midair by taping a skewer stick onto it and then holding the stick with our helping hand. While we could have used fishing line, it would have been much more difficult to adjust the lid’s angle that way. You can see the ones we use in this link.

Thanks for sticking around until the end and we hope you learned a little something. We love these tools and use them pretty consistently. However, we’re always looking for new ways or tools to achieve something so let us know what tricks you have up your sleeve in a comment below. We’re all about sharing the knowledge here. ☺️

For more helpful photography tools, check out our Amazon shop here.

Is it the weekend yet?

Arabela