16 March 2016

Flat lay photography - my new header



I don't know if you've noticed but I've been making some changes to the layout of the blog. One of the things that were bothering me the most was the header image. It's the first thing you see when you enter a blog, kind of the first impression the reader gets and mine wasn't making me happy at all!
With that in mind, I had this idea of making a new lettering piece (every excuse is a good one). The process of creating it is something I'll probably talk about in a different post as it's something I don't usually do as everything was made manually and I usually jump to the computer stage as soon as I can...
Nonetheless today I wanted to talk about the process of creating the image per se.

Idea
I knew I wanted to take a photo on my desk with a composition of elements that were simultaneously inspiring and useful. Well...not all elements are actually useful but they tell a bit more about me when you first enter the blog (that's why there's a children's book there which wouldn't usually be on my desk while I'm working on lettering but is such an important part of me that there was no way it wasn't going to be featured there. Choosing only one was obviously the problem...

Research
The objects that were going to appear in the image were decided but having google and pinterest as my best friends I decided it wouldn't hurt to see what others have been doing around the same subject. To my surprise, I discovered a world of articles about flat objects photography but they featured mainly beauty stuff

Composition
After laying the objects in an organized chaos, I started to take pictures. I suggest you take an experimental photo to get your composition right. Seeing your composition through the screen is completely different and helps you see if everything is well balanced.
An important tip is when you take some photos you think you're happy with, see them on the computer. 



For example, this is the first photo I took and I thought it was ok but when I saw on the computer I realized there was a stop of white space. With everything still in place, I was able to fix it. And I'm not even joking this was what editing looked like. Not comfortable but effective.



Light
I knew I was going to use natural light so I waited for the weekend to work on this as I come home after dark during week days.
My office is a great natural light during the afternoon but it starts to get direct sunlight around 4 pm and since I didn't want huge light contrasts I started photographing right after lunch.

Then It was just a matter of editing the image to soften the shadows and make the letting pop a bit more.
I quite like the final result and it is the first thing you see.
What do you think?



1 comment:

  1. It's beautiful and you have some great tips. However, your typo's are a bit concerning. I wonder if English is your first language?

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