Not to long ago, I ran into an interesting problem when I was taking some photos of an old oil can spout.

I wanted to take a photo of the spout with it standing up, kind of like how it would be when it is on an oil can.  Then it hit me—prop it up on something.

I tried a few different ways to prop it up, but nothing really worked that well.  Then it hit me—what if I prop it up on something like a pencil or a dowel rod?

As you can see at the bottom of the spout, the tip end of the pencil is in a hole on the table while the end with the eraser is holding up the spout.  It worked great to help hold up the spout so I can take some photos to look like it is being used like in the photo below.

This would be easy to set up—you can hold the pencil or dowel rod up in a vise or even prop it up in the top of a bottle.

You can see the oil spout in my Etsy shop here.

This is one trick that can help with taking photos for the items that you are going to sell.  What are some of the tricks that you use?