Happy New Year. Happy January. Welcome to the first blog post of 2018. This post is long overdue, but before we get into it, I wanted to say THANK YOU so much for your amazing support on my last post of 2017! You all are amazing and I love you all! ??

Now, let’s get right into today’s post, which is a new series here on the blog that I’m calling “How Tos” — this is where I will share all my tips and tricks and tools that I use daily for as a blogger and entrepreneur. If you have any questions that you want me to answer, contact me or DM me on IG!

Fashion bloggers have been using Flatlays to tell unique stories of their sponsored products for a while now. I love flatlays because they allow me to focus on the product without any distractions. For the past couple of years, I have been incorporating flatlays in my Instagram feeds as an extension of my visual storytelling.

There are so many ways to style and take photos of flatlay images, and yet no one way to style and take them, in my opinion. And what I mean by that is that you must style your flatlays that way that is pleasing to you and no one else. It looks easy to style a flatlay, but it is an art—it takes a unique eye to style an eye-catching flatlay.

All photos styled + photographed by me // Please use with permission // Please tag on Instagram if used.

Flatlays vary from minimalist to “maximinalist”, meaning you can have as much or as little props as needed to help tell your visual story. To be honest: there is no perfect way to style flatlays; you just must go with your instincts and it truly as to do with what you are trying to convey. The key is to have a focus. For me, flatlays can take anywhere from five minutes to style to hours to style, shoot, and edit; it truly depends on what project I’m working on. In the end though, the basics to styling, shooting, and editing my flatlays are just about the same.

In today’s post, I wanted to share with you my five tips for taking flatlay photos. Flatlays are powerful, stylish and a great way to add continuity and visual interest to your curated Instagram feed. Here are my five tips for taking my flatlay photos

Focal Point.

Find your focal point in your flatlay and work around it. If you have a single product(s) that you need to focus on then feel free to style your photos around your focal point. Just remember that your focal point is the number one goal. If you focus on other part of the photo you will lose the essence of the photo.

Props/Styling Accessories.

To achieve a beautifully styled photo that is focus on the main product or subject, you need to have complimentary props that help to tell your story not diminish the photo. The easiest way to focus on your primary product or prop that you’re trying to shoot is to find one or two things on your flatlay styling table that you want to focus on a then go from there.

Editing.

Editing is important and critical to achieving the best flatlay photo. This to me is a matter of preference of your editing style.

Lighting.

This is the single most important component of taking a good flatlay photo. Without good (scratch that, AWESOME) lighting, your photo is going to be subpar. So get outside, find a nice well-lit window and snap away!

Background.

Equally as important as the above is the background. If you are shooting food flatlays, then opt for a dark back ground. White is great, but try colorful plates + styling elements and props to make the food pop.

I hope you found my five tips for taking flatlay photos helpful. If you give any of these tips a try, I would love to see your final photos, so tag me on Insta for a chance to get reposted on my page: @AlwaysCreatingBlog or #MyACBFlatlay

xo

Glor

All photos styled + photographed by me // Please use with permission // Please tag on Instagram if used.