Every model's casting bag holds the same five things: heels, a plain tank, a comp card, water, and a phone with the agency's number. Mine has a sixth thing, a scratched plastic point-and-shoot that cost less than lunch, and it has done more for my career than the heels.
It started as a habit between castings. You spend a lot of time waiting on plastic stools in hallways with eleven other women who all look vaguely like you, and at some point somebody has to break the silence. A funny little camera does it. You take a photo of the hallway, someone laughs, someone asks if it is loaded with real film, and suddenly the room is human again.
Then it changed how I work. Shooting my friends on film taught me where light falls and what a lens does to a face at one metre versus three. When a photographer says they are going to backlight me and let the frame flare, I know exactly what they will get, because I have burned a whole roll finding out. Models who shoot are easier to shoot. Several photographers have told me this while I was, at that moment, taking their picture.
And once, genuinely, it booked the job. A casting director in District 1 asked everyone the same closing question, "anything else?", which usually means the answer is no. I said I had half a roll left and took her portrait by the window. She called the agency before I got to the lift. The campaign ran for three months.
The camera stays in the bag.