iPhone Photography – Take a Fancy Flatlay of your Makes

1. Intro: I taught this class for the very first time on the Knit Happy Summit. I learned a great deal regarding placement, accessorizing your photos ratio, how to use my phone camera, et cetera. Thank you, man. I loved Rn Odental's presentation on how to take good photos. I never do the project justice. So I'm excited to put it into practice. It was easy to follow and I appreciated that you didn't need a ton of equipment. Just your phone was enough. I was truly impressed by the mode of photos that popped on the grid on our Facebook group on the very same day. In this class, we focused on flat light photography. Be course, you can do it at home in your sweat pants. And there's definitely no need for you to show up in your own photos and model your stuff. I will show you my setup and then we have a live shooting together where you get to watch over my shoulders. And you will learn my best tips and tricks. So it's really easy to get started and it's a nice way to show your makes. So are you out or are you in? 2. Class Project: For your class project, you need to take some photos. Big surprise, I know. So we have a project gallery here. Please create a new project, upload your photos, and write a bit about it. What went well, what didn't. And ask me anything you want to. I'm happy to give you some feedback now to make this all a bit easier for you. I created a workbook. It's 27 pages, nice PDF. I want you to download it in the resource area. Please be aware it's only available on the browser version of Skilled Chair, not in the app. This workbook will help you to go through the lessons and do all the things I ask you to do. It will also help you to remind whatever you learned here. All right, let's get started. 3. Some Theory: So what? It's a flat lay photo, you probably already know this. But you know, just in case, let's have a quick chat about it. For a flat lay, all your items have to lay flat on your background, which is, by the way, mostly a table. And the table is often enough in your kitchen, so keep your sweat pants on and relax. There's no need to go outside for this tutorial flat. Lay is a styled and composed photo and that gives you a lot of freedom and get creative. We want to tell stories and we do not want to document reality. That's a whole other thing. The one thing that is really important when you shoot straight down, all lines have to be straight to create a good look. I don't want to see any weird angles. No, strange perspective. Okay, please keep that in mind. 4. Your Why: Y or y or should I say Y or play? No. Okay. You don't have to answer this question in a deep sense. Just a simple intention will already give you pointers on how to take your photos. To give you some examples. If you want to share your work in progress on Instagram, keep in mind that the, that's the kind of new grid format is vertical and has a ratio of 425. If you enjoy being part of makers groups either on revelry or Facebook, you can shoot in the classic digital format that is four to three and shoot horizontal. On another note, if you want to share your stories on a blog, you need to reach for a higher level of styling. 5. What items: So grab whatever you want to capture. Today we will talk about anything else like your necessary equipment, backgrounds, and props in a minute. However, let me tell you right away, a Smartphone is absolutely great to take flat lay photos. 6. Where...: I always recommend starting with finding your magical place for flatly you won't need a beautiful fancy set up, but you need the three things. First of all, good light. And with good light, I actually mean natural light, the one that's coming from the sun. You know, natural light works best for us and it is three. Therefore, I recommend that you shoot close to window second a table and that one is mostly for comfort. I mean, if you want to crawl on your knees on the floor, I won't hold you back. However, I can tell you from personal experience that it can be quite uncomfortable. And if you don't have a table next to window, move your furniture, it's really worth it. Last but not least, it's good to have neutral surroundings because a blue wall will reflect on your scene and so does a pink T shirt also. So be careful with noise. 7. When: If you want to know what is the number one thing you need to get nailed for sure, Let me tell you, it's lighting. I would also say that lighting is the one thing most people get wrong because they think bright light in the middle of the day creates the best photos. Or they have heard about the golden hour and have to find out the hard way that it's not that great for a knitting project. If you are up for a little experiment, try this. Seek out your magical place in front of a window, choose a light background, pick one small knitted item, and then take the same photo several times during the day. And in the end, compare all your photos. Depending on the direction your window is facing, you will get the best light, either in the mornings or afternoons, to shoot your makes. And I know that's a bit of spoiler, I'm sorry, but just to give you some points. 8. What else: What else do you need? So we're going to keep it super simple today with the equipment. I don't want to overwhelm you at all. Your smartphone is fine, and the one thing I do recommend additionally, is a white phone board to use as a reflector. And we will see that in the shooting in a minute. You can use a lot of things for the background. A wooden table is great, like the one you might have in your kitchen, or as a coffee table in your living room. A linen cloth can be beautiful. Cardboards are generally awesome. You can wire background or you can also buy photo backgrounds if you have money for it. Generally, I recommend keeping in mind that a background should stay in the background, so make sure that you don't have a lot of texture there. It shouldn't be too colorful. Any kinds of crazy are kind of no go. So you can use for props, a lot of things. I personally love a good bowl for a messy work in progress just to hold it together. I do love dried flowers. The smaller the petals, the better. And we will definitely work with those today. Stitch markets are great, so are other notions. Books and magazines, of course. And generally, think about what can help you tell your story and can enhance the atmosphere you want to create. And try to keep it simple. No two to three extra items are more than enough. Usually less is more. 9. Set Up: All right. And now that we have everything together, we're going to start shooting. Okay. Let's do shooting. So, welcome to my studio, which is just a little corner in our bedroom. I do get beautiful light here in the morning. It's around 11:00 right now, and I want to use this time to show you my set up and give you some tips how you can level up your photos. Let's do it. I personally don't like to shoot on white. I like to shoot on black. That's why I have this black cardboard here. It's nothing fancy. You can get this in any art supply store. The other thing I recommend you should get is a white form board. You will put this parallel to your window, it will even out your background, and it will soften up your lights. That's the way you create a beautiful flat lay. But also any other photo, you can just put it next to a box if you have one. Doesn't have to look like this, of course. 10. Ideas and Inspiration: So the items I want to show today are my ahoy bandana cowl and the matching head mo head. The mon head has been in making stories, that's why I will add this magazine to the whole scene. Additionally, I'm thinking in two ways. For once, this magazine is about sustainability. Those might be nice to add some elements that feel very more like natural stuff. The other thing is that the fisherman's rib and the whole collection is calf, had this nice sea story behind it. I could also use some elements, maybe sea salt, maybe shells. We will see. Okay. 11. Shooting : One thing that's very important that for this picture, I don't want to work our whole scene you see in my regular camera. I want you to create a vertical photo for Instagram or other mobile apps. I put my smartphone here because that's what you want to shoot with. Here you can see what's happening on this little screen is what I want to shoot and how I want to compose my picture. When you shoot a flat lay, it's quite important that you get your smartphone parallel to your background and see that little x in the middle that will help you to see if you are holding it really parallel to the ground. If it's not parallel, you get to see that white one and a yellow one. And you're going to play with it as long as you need until you get that yellow. Just one X and everything is all right. I have my bandana cow here in my head. I think that already looks nice. Now let's see how we can implement this magazine. And I also have a cork notebook that might be nice in the mix. Generally understand this flat lay has no depths. It's actually really helpful if you layer up, have some other things that bring in different levels. You get additional depths in your photo. So honestly, you can play for a long time here until you feel like this looks good. I played a bit with the arrangement, added this into the picture. Now let's see what else we can do. All right, the next thing I want to show you is to play with flowers. I dried this rose. Baby breath. I like to use the petals to add sprinkles for texture and I use the big ones for Pka boy effect. Let's get started with adding some sprinkles. This is really nice, especially if you have a minimal background like we have here, the black, simple black background. It helps to make everything a bit more interesting and also looks, I think, a lot more creative. Of course, you will see it will light up and em up your pictures quite a lot. This is a super simple trick. You can do this with other things to markers are great for this. You have some nice ones confetti but also salt and pepper. But flowers are kind of my favorite to be honest. All right, so make sure you don't have this. We overlaps slightly, everything is spread out nicely. The last thing I want to show you is how to create pickable effect. And for this you're going to take just one of these baby breaths. Things. You hold it very close to your lens. I'm going to come up here too because it could do the same with the camera. See that what this does is it creates another layer right at the front. Gives you the feeling as if you peek through it. It also frames the whole picture. If you play long enough, it will also focus again where you want to have it, like in the middle. However, there's a possibility to do this on your smartphone very easily. All you got to do is touch your screen, hold it right in the middle, then it will lock. Now it locks the focus in the middle. When you play with it will always focus there. No matter what you do, see that? All right, And then you take a picture. Not only one big rule. Always take someone. I'm now working with two very small ones. Let's see if this is easier. Might be the tricky part is that you have to hold them with one hand so you can shoot with the other one. But there's also the possibility to set a timer. You can either choose three or 10 seconds on the phone. I'm going to go for ten now it counts here in the corner. I have time to arrange that with my hands free. Generally, for the peekaboo effect. Let me say, the smaller your petals are, the easier it is to work this. All right? I think we've got it. This is our first picture. I think it's beautiful. 12. Alternative Composition: Of course, there are other ways to arrange a flat lay. In this case, I try to create cover photo for this class. I arranged everything linear to each other. It's a bit like playing with Legos, to be honest. The rest is quite honestly the same procedure than before. Lay it all out, take your flat lay photo, be happy. 13. Alternative Styling: All right. So I already set up my scene. As you can see, I just wanted to show you that it's the same recipe we used before. In this case, I chose a lighter background which has a lot more texture on it. I added a book underneath my knittings to layer it up. Then I added some things to tell more of the story like the seashell and this thing, I'm not sure how it's called, you can see it a lot here at the North and East. Sam for sprinkles. I went this time for sea salt nautical theme around it. I think this already looks pretty nice. I'm going to take a picture of it. I'm not sure if I need the baby breaths here, but we will try that too. Again, you just hold it very close to your lens and then you can frame it a bit and give this nice little pickable effect. Another thing I want to talk about is that you can put on every camera a grid. Have a look at your settings. Those will help you to align in flat all lines. Of course, you could also have this in a much more loose arrangement if you want to. But what's really not good is if you have something that is just slightly, slightly off, always looks a bit weird, make sure if you have it straight in here, that's cool, that it works with the grid together. Something else you can play with are actually this fluffy things. If you hold them quite close to your lens, you get this mist effect. It's nice but it's very hard to catch. To be honest, make sure that you only have the Paabo stuff over the things that are not important and you keep your its clean. Maybe blur it out the edges but don't hide them. 14. After the Shooting: As we are here at the end of our lesson, let me tell you, this is only the start of your journey. There is so much more to learn. One step is missing here for sure. As every photo shoot actually ends in, it's the last thing to do. Editing will transform your photos from okay to wow. It starts with the simple things like cropping and ensuring your photo has a right ratio for the place where you want to share it. It's also about making basic corrections, but most of all it can help you to enhance your style. What I did here with our photos from the shootings are most of all correcting the base color. It's winter here in Germany and the light today was exceptional, cold, and made the photos therefore too blue. I took it even one step further on the right picture here, I worked with color grading to make it look even more as if this scene got whitewashed on a sunny day at the sea. Therefore, I changed the highlights and tinted them with a bit more yellow tone. On the left photo, I enhance the colors to make them pop. I did also add contrast and texture. That's just a quick introduction for you. Generally, editing would easily fill another. Maybe you will let me teach you this art on another day. 15. Final Things: Congrats. You are at the end of the class and you managed to watch the whole thing. I'm very proud of you. How you enjoyed this little journey with me immensely and learned a lot. Had fun shooting your own makes. If you like this class, please give me a rating. So there are several things you can rat on. It's just to click some buttons. I will let you know if you think this is a beginner class or maybe somebody with intermediate knowledge would profit more from it. Thank you so much. Thank you for taking this class.