Flat Lays
Flat lay photographs are a powerful tool for getting to know my students, as well as for teaching and reinforcing the skills of composition. My students completed their first flat lay projects in the fall of 2020 when we started the year online. The prompts—to create a passion kit and/or a survival kit—gave the students a lot to think about, and both their photographs and their written responses were poignant. Since then, we’ve continued to do this project in a variety of formats— from ‘what you have in your backpack today’ to ‘what you can’t get through a school day without’ to even designing our 2022 yearbook cover as a flat lay design.