Whether you're taking photos of your food, daily outfits, beauty products, or essentials, you know that flatlay is the way to go. Most of the time, I use my iPhone to take photos. Although I have a DSLR, my phone is more handy and has a square setting which is perfect for my Instagram photos. Also, I just use a white japanese paper or sometimes an illustration board as my background. Sometimes, my floor also serves as a background since it is made of wood. This just proves that you don't really need a fancy equipment and materials to capture a great photo.
I'm currently following a lot of bloggers on my Instagram account and they have inspired me in a lot of ways. Through their photos, I get to learn more on how to style my photos. I also browse Pinterest form time to time and save some pins as references for my flatlays. In my post, I will be showing how I put together my flatlay in different ways and give you some tips.
1. Balance Composition
These are my go to style for my flatlays. The traditional grid is one of my favorites. You just have to even out and line up your objects in a square format. They need to be straight and balanced. If you’re hands are a little shaky or you don’t have a tripod, you can correct it on an editing app to straighten them out. The next one is the alternate angle, this one is also like the traditional grid but you turn your camera on an angle. This will give your photo a different look and composition. It can also add variety to your feed rather than just your usual traditional grid. Another one is the room for text. This is great for putting captions on your photos. You don’t really have to capture everything in the photo. This style kinds of gives it some space.
2. Good Lighting
When shooting flatlay, its important to have a good lighting. As much as possible, shoot in natural light and avoid harsh lighting. You might also wanna do some test shots in different parts of your house to see which area has the best lighting.
3. Use editing applications
You can always edit your photos if you’re not quite satisfied with it. These are the two apps that I usually use for my photos. If you don’t have much lighting in your photos, I suggest you use the app a color story. Vsco is also one of my favorites. Don’t be afraid to play around with your photos but don’t go overboard and crazy on editing your photos. Sometimes you just need to enhance the color and maybe adjust the brightness and contrast.
4. Shoot in squares
What I love about my iPhone is that it already has a square format for taking photos. I no longer need to crop out my photos and visualize my shots to make it fit into a square. You can also shoot directly using instagram to get a square photo.
There are a lot of ways on how to style and make your photos more instagramable. I also read articles about it and browse a lot of photos. It takes some effort to make your feed look pretty. Also, it doesn’t take one shot to get everything right. Its a trial and error process. Keep on taking photos until you are satisfied with it. Try shooting in different angles and re-arranging your objects. I hope this posts helps :-)
I just realized I would do anything to look for an excuse to play with colors. *Woops!*
I love story telling too. It’s probably the reason why I eventually took up photography, played with paints and now trying my hand at video making. I think a lot of us are excited by the possibilities by which storytelling can be done in many forms today: from words to hues to images and the list goes on.…
