Let Your Basic Flag Fly With These A+ Instagram Flat Lay Tips

PEDESTRIAN.TV has partnered with HP to help y’all be as stylish as their new HP Spectre laptop. More on that below, but you can suss out the lush piece of work HERE, getting amongst them on Facebook HERE / Instagram HERE / Twitter HERE.


If you’ve taken a scroll through your Insta in the past hour or two, you’ll know that perfectly laid out items from a birds-eye view (aka a flat lay) really rake in those sweet double taps – a beautiful thing in a world full of egotistical selfies and hot dog legs.

Considering it’s a serious money-maker (you can fit sahhh many products / brand tags into just one shot), we’re gonna school you on how to tesselate like a mofo in this visually aesthetic game y’all are playin’.

FIND YOUR ~PERSONAL STYLE~


The good thing about flat lays is that, although they’re all the same, they’re all quite different too depending on style, curation and personal taste. Some minimalistic ‘Grammers will flat lay two or three products, while others will tesselate upwards of 50. Some will have a neat, structured thing going on while others will go for the messy, cluttered feels. 

Know your theming, be it minimal or organised clutter, and stick to it like glue to Miss Lippy.

CHOOSE AN ACE BACKGROUND


Alright, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that a plain white surface is where it’s at. It’ll make your objects pop the heck off, while also being versatile in what y’can put on it. Don’t be afraid to play with textures (the white crinkled blanky is totally having a moment for those ~Sunday morning feels~), or even go for something like a wooden table, marble bench top or tiled floor.

Photographer Josephine Willcox tells PEDESTRIAN.TV:

“White backgrounds are my go-to, basically because because I can put whatever pretty things I want on it without worrying ’bout colour schemes or how busy the frame looks. Even tones, balance and minimalism are what I like.”

CLEAN ‘YA GOODS

A photo posted by M A D A L Y N N (@maddillon) on

 

“Try to keep your products clean – give them a wipe before you photograph them. It’s fine to show that you’ve used a product but seeing your dirty finger prints all over beautiful packaging is not cool,” Maddy Dillon, interior designer and stylist, tells PEDESTRIAN.TV.
Seems like a given, but we’re all filthy humans touching filthy items with filthy bacteria every filthy second of every filthy day, and there’s nothing like perfect lighting to highlight all those germs. Give ’em a wipe down for your follower’s sake, as well as your own when there’s less editing to do.


EDITING’S OK, FILTERS NOT SO MUCH

Travel essentials ?? @lexusaustralia @hatrikkk #lexuslife #travel

A photo posted by Kate Waterhouse (@katewaterhouse7) on

In 2016, flat lays are about as close to reality as a season of The Bachelor. It’s OK to edit, you guys, just don’t overdo it. 

Farshun blogger Kate Waterhouse says:


“For me, filters are a definite no. I think keeping it as natural as possible always looks the nicest – creating clean lines with the product without washing it out or changing the frame too much.

I do however, like to play around with the shots in Photoshop once they are uploaded. Rather than adding in filters I often change the backgrounds (sometimes adding in a light pastel colour or even shapes). It can also be fun to add in text where needed, or if there is empty space that needs filling, duplicating products and placing them down again work well too.”


Apps like Snapseed, Lightroom and VSCO Cam are also A+ for things, like colour correction and shadow brightening, that’re fixable via phone. 

GET YOUR PORTABLE ON

A photo posted by Charli Burrowes (@meohmygirl) on


Because we’re all living these on-the-go lives (or at least our social media profiles have people thinking that) it’s not so cray to be lugging ’round your tools of the trade everywhere you go. Both Maddy and Kate admit to having portable backdrops – AND HERE WE WERE THINKING THEY ALL HAD MARBLE BENCH TOPS LIKE MILLIONAIRES. 

“Portable backgrounds are handy if you’re inconsistent with when you take photos. This is very handy for me as I go back and forth between shooting in my bedroom and bathroom depending on the lighting,” explains Maddy. Kate is also a culprit, saying, “I usually use a white art board that I lug around with me.”

Look, it’s not so crazy. And because we all know photo editing apps don’t usually cut it, you’re probs going to need a lappy for those ~real time updates~ too. Enter the world’s thinnest laptop – the v. sleek, v. on-trend HP Spectre, which not only acts as a great device for creating on-point pictures, but has a design so lush that it will look ah-mazing in the flat lays too. Haven’t you heard that rose gold is all the rage right now? Lucky this beaut piece of computing (which you can suss HERE) has that tonality covered.

Photo: Instagram / Margaret Zhang


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At PEDESTRIAN.TV, we independently choose and write about stuff we love and think you’ll froth too. We have affiliate partnerships so we might get a bit of money from any purchase you make based on our recs, cool? Cool. FYI – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

More Stuff From PEDESTRIAN.TV