Flat Lays 3 Ways
Flat Lays—a Creative, Contained Way to Style
I cannot emphasize enough that flat lays—that is, laid-out arrangements on a tabletop or backdrop of items that together tell a cohesive story—have no rules, and this is why they’re so popular and fun.
However, I must confess: The first few times I tried creating my own flat lays, they fell… er, flat!
Part of this is because for the first couple years that I was learning to use my DSLR camera and take better pictures, I hadn’t mastered the principles I share in Lesson One of this course, Stronger Social Media Images in 5 Simple Steps. I often didn’t have a clear place for the eye to go, or when I did have a subject in mind, my props were distracting. I just tried too hard, or crammed too many items into the frame.
Another reason was that I hadn’t mastered lifestyle photography—working to appeal to a particular audience. I’d use props that were cute and trendy, but together conflicted with each other in terms of the overall brand story I was trying to tell. For example, I might put a succulent into the frame that was a very low-maintenance, southwestern-desert type of houseplant, and also put in silk scarves that were a little more vintage-New-York and uptown-looking. Totally different lifestyles.
Eventually I figured these things out, but after a while, when what I was doing still wasn’t working, I had to take a step back and really analyze what other photographers were doing when they did flat lays well. In other words, I had to ask, “What am I missing?” And I started to notice some repeating themes on Pinterest, Instagram, and other visual platforms. In my head, I started calling three approaches in particular the Crescent, the Three-Rung Ladder, and the Reverse “S.” These provided some frameworks from which to start whenever I’d be styling something that was giving me trouble.
The Crescent
The Three-Rung Ladder
The Reverse “S”
What was truly helpful about these “frameworks,” as I am calling them, was that they were indisputably simple.
With the crescent method, essentially I needed only two ingredients: the subject, which could be anything from a notebook to a coffee mug to a beauty product, and something to frame it with in a crescent shape. This could be fall leaves, spices, flowers, Christmas lights and pine needles, ribbon and other pretty “art” supplies, or basically anything I could mould to the crescent shape.
With the three-rung ladder method, I only needed three of an item. Candles, books, lotions, teas, bouquets—as long as there were three, I could put them together in an ascending order from bottom left to top right, and bam—I had a flat lay. I could add other props around if I wanted, but they weren’t essential.
With the reverse “S” method, I could use as much or as little as I needed to “write” a story with my image, so long as the images followed the motion of top left to bottom right. (I’ve seen a small percentage of flat lays done in a straight-forward “S,” rather than the backward “S,” but I think what makes the reverse “S” so much more popular in the western world is that we read from left to right, and generally from top to bottom, so the flow of the reverse “S” works with the flow we’re already familiar and comfortable with.)
Especially when I’m on a time-crunch, such as when I’m shooting for one of my subscription clients, having these three methods to fall back on is a huge time-saver, and it’s also really helpful when I’m feeling creatively drained and I have no other starting point.
Graduating to Higher-Level Approaches
As helpful as these frameworks are, sometimes they don’t work with what you have on-hand to shoot. Often as a subscription photographer, I’m mailed or sent home with products to shoot and I’ll only get one of each. So, for example, I can’t use the three-rung ladder method, because all the products will be different sizes and shapes and types, and they don’t look right when I style them in an ascending fashion in a flat lay.
Another common occurrence is needing images to conform to a particular “location” in print or online. In other words, sometimes you’re shooting a flat lay to make a body of text more interesting in a particular context. I recently got a flyer in the mail from Anthropologie for a 30% off sale, and the front of the flyer was a photo that went all the way out to the edges of the cardstock, but only the edges of the photo actually had products on them; the center was reserved for the text they added afterward that said, “30% off” and the reason for the sale.
So there are 3 other approaches that I find helpful, which I call the Fill, the Frame, and the Freestyle.
The Fill
In the video that kicks off this lesson, I show how I used the Fill method to shoot some images for a clean deodorant brand. In both the images I shared, I approached the process by making the images feel random and full of motion—nothing was perfectly lined up with anything else within the frame, to create a sense that all the items had been dropped onto the backdrop like pickup-sticks.
However, this isn’t the only way to fill a frame. As you’ll see in the first example above, you can actually fill your frame in an orderly fashion, using up as much space as possible to “fill” the frame.
The Frame
When using the frame method, there’s often no obvious subject. This is the case when the image needs to be neutral so that the text or text block that will overlay the image can be the focus.
In the images above, I do think there’s a clear place for the eye to settle, which is not necessarily a bad thing; for instance, if the darkest image in the examples above was the homepage banner for a handcrafted jewelry brand, you’d want the eye to notice and be drawn to the examples of the wooden jewelry, even if there was text overlaying the image.
For cases when the image simply needs to sit behind a call to action or an ad for, say, a webinar, it’s better if the image is pretty and appeals to a particular lifestyle, but doesn’t offer a clear place for the eye to land so that the eye can instead be drawn immediately to the text and the viewer can read about what the creator is selling.
NOTE: The illustrations over the jewelry image above are in reference to something called the Golden Ratio, which we will address in the final lesson of this course.
Freestyle
Freestyling is exactly what it sounds like—using your own muse to create something one-of-a-kind. For all the benefits of frameworks, they don’t always produce designs that feel 100% original—so we all, I think, want to get to that level where what we create is entirely our own, where we’re led completely by our own inspiration and creative instincts.
I’m a big believer that creativity needs bounds within which to work, but truthfully, if you’re using the principles I’ve shared so far in this course (choose your subject, choose your story, know the lifestyle you’re trying to appeal to, etcetera), you already have all the bounds you need to generate one-of-a-kind flat lays. In fact, when we get to the Compositional Techniques that Double for Styling lesson, you’ll really be empowered to create anything eyecatching in your images, especially flat lay layouts!
If you’re looking for some outside-the-box ideas for flat lays, follow this board and this board on Pinterest to get your creative juices flowing!
If you haven’t already joined the Facebook Community, access that here, and share your flat lays (and the stories behind them) there!
Hello there! I’m your hostess, Alexis.
I’m the Original Subscription Photographer (& photo stylist) for creative professionals. I run my business in Portsmouth, NH. I’m super pumped to have you here!