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Clare Coulson How to wow your Instagram followers with petal power
Flat lay flower photography is more than just a huge Instagram trend, says Clare Coulson
One of the mixed blessings of gardening is the fleeting nature of so many flowers – we spend months dreaming, sowing, nurturing them and then their starring moment lasts just a few weeks or even days. But the Instagram flat lay – a collection of materials artfully arranged before being photographed from above – is helping to provide beautiful records of those transient moments.
It’s a 21st-century answer to the genteel arts of Edwardian ladies pressing flowers, or capturing them in watercolours, and is itself a well established format. Readers of RHS magazine The Garden will be familiar with the work of photographer Derek St Romaine and others going back decades. But it is Instagram that has breathed new life and relevance into the flat lay.
When Becky Crowley began working as the cut flower grower at Chatsworth House in 2014 she wanted to find a way to document the flowers as they came into bloom throughout the year, so she started to lay them out next to each other and photograph them.
“As an artist at heart, these pictures soon became a great creative outlet, and a bit of an obsession,” says Crowley who is currently working at Floret Flower Farm in Washington State, where she has continued to document what’s growing. “I often use our fanciest garden blooms, but I love to include tree leaves, grasses, seed heads and weeds too, as they all help convey the atmosphere of a particular moment in a season.”
She uses flowers that share similar colours as well as grouping sizes that will work harmoniously. “None should be too dominant over the others.”
For Crowley, these moment-in-time images are a useful tool – a reminder of successful schemes and newly trialled cultivars. “The process of making flat lays has also given me a chance to look more closely at the flowers and find combinations that complement each other, which in turn helps with planning future planting schemes. When planning I often find myself looking back through my Instagram feed for details of what was flowering when, and combinations that worked well together.”
Around the same time in 2014, photographer Éva Németh – whose glorious garden images appear in magazines including House & Garden and Gardens Illustrated – was a finalist in the International Garden Photographer of the Year competition when she entered a series of flat lay images depicting foxgloves and hollyhocks. Shortly after that she began documenting seasonal arrangements and their ingredients each month with Rachel Siegfried of Green & Gorgeous Flowers.
“I was doing these pictures for a while before knowing them as flat lays,” says Németh. “It allows me to tell a story. I work with all these florists and they create these beautiful things – I cannot do that. But when I do a flat lay, I can say ‘Oh, it’s beautiful.’”
Németh advises following a similar process as if you were arranging flowers: having a colour theme and placing the main flower or focal point a little bit off-centre rather than creating something too symmetrical.
Her images have become so popular that she now hosts half-day courses in the art of flat lay (visit evanemeth.com for further information). She also sells prints of her own work and garden owners have started to ask her to do additional flat lays when she is commissioned to photograph their gardens.
For photographer Cristina Colli, who hosts online masterclasses and workshops, these styled images are also a
‘The creative process is very soothing… it helps me relax and release anxiety’ ‘It’s a reminder to enjoy the moment, appreciate the beauty and embrace change’
meditative hobby. “The process of creating flat lays is very soothing and, like all creative activities, it helps me relax and release anxiety,” she says.
“And it’s a great exercise to practise impermanence. Each composition, once photographed, needs to be taken apart to create a new one, so the whole process is a reminder to enjoy the moment, appreciate the beauty, embrace change, and let go of the old to make room for the new.”
Colli also points out that there are few barriers to creating a flat lay – they can be made at home using any sort of plants and flowers with any type of camera or even a phone camera.
“There’s a meditative quality in choosing flowers and props, setting up the scene, and arranging flowers and that’s quite soothing – so perfect if you want to slow down and relax.”
She suggests starting with just a few flowers of the same variety – odd numbers always work best in compositions – and then just play with their positions. “I also try to work intuitively, looking at the way a stem curves or bends, the direction a leaf points, the way petals unfold, and move them around the background until they ‘fit’ and form a nice little family.
“Another important thing is trying to create a flow, so use shapes and lines to direct the eye around the whole composition, or towards the main focus of the image. Again, it’s all about practice – the more you practice, the better you’ll be at it.”
But the popularity of these still-life pictures is also very useful for gardeners, as professionals like Crowley – who takes great care to name the plants she has photographed – share their favourite plants via social media.
Similarly the Danish gardener and florist Claus Dalby has begun to create filmed versions of the flat lay – recording his favourite seasonal blooms in short films that can all be saved into folders on Instagram. At the end of the growing season, says Dalby, you will have an entire colour-themed collection of plants from spring bulbs and annuals to dahlias and his favourite shrubs to choose from.