111: Mastering Wedding Flat Lays with Rebecca Yale

Mastering Wedding Flat Lays

Rebecca Yale is an award winning fine art photographer who has been featured in everything from Brides Magazine to Martha Stewart Weddings. Flatlays are a huge part of her photography style, and certainly takes her work to the next level.

You can take the composition skills you learn from mastering wedding flat lays and use them in your other work.
The stronger you make your composition, the faster and easier it is for your viewer to “get” an image.
We only get imposter syndrome if we aren’t being ourselves.
You don’t know what’s happening behind someone’s Instagram.
Where you look for inspiration can be very dangerous, because seeing too much of other people’s work can cloud your brain.
It’s okay to have a season of taking in a lot of inspiration from others, but it’s important to know when to step back and create for yourself.
Still life goes back hundreds of years – go back and study the greats of lighting and composition. Photographers can learn so much from the world of painting.
Photograph the same object in 10 different ways. Look at how the options change the opinion of what you’re saying in the photograph.
Because these objects truly matter, we should practice flat lays before. Wedding days are not the time to practice.
If you’re thinking on a wedding day, you’re already behind! You need to be on muscle memory.
Get stationery and practice – grab your shoes, your husband’s shoes, etc.
Your eye reads a frame how we read a book. Be purposeful in how you guide the viewer’s eye.
Style with intentionality. Tell a story. If you can’t caption an image, you probably shouldn’t be putting it out there.