16TOP OF MINDFOREGROUND
PERENNIAL BOUQUET
PRESERVING WEDDING FLOWERS THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY
u A tenderness for flowers inspired wedding photographer Steffi Smith to create
fine art photography of clients’ bouquets and wedding reception arrangements. “It
broke my heart when I would see all these gorgeous flowers and they would die
afterwards,” she says. “I always take pictures of them, and one winter when I had
nothing to do, I started messing around doing paintings of them.”
Smith was a painter before she became a photographer, selling her work in galleries
for upward of $20,000. She leverages her artistic sensibility to create these photo-
graphic works, starting with a photograph of acrylics on canvas, combining that with her
bouquet images in Photoshop, and then using Photoshop brushes to complete the work.
“I call them painterly images,” she says. “To me, it’s like contemporary mixed media.”
“The brides love it,” she says. She makes the works for her own enjoyment during
her downtime in the winter months regardless of whether the bride plans to pur-
chase a canvas print of the image. But many of them do. “It’s nice for them to be able
to preserve the bouquet,” she says. Recently one bride displayed the canvas print of
her pink bouquet in her newborn’s bedroom. And another bride asked Smith if she
could have the image printed on a leather purse. “That way, I can take the bouquet
on every date with my husband,” she told Smith.
Smith makes the images by arriving early to the wedding. “I always take the time
to take the flowers beforehand, even before the wedding starts, before they are pay-
ing me, because I love, love, love flowers.” •