Rangefinder Magazine
July 2005

Click Here for printable version of this article.

Profile: Barbara Smith by Julie Miller

All of Smith’s photographs, from the more traditional to the photojournalistic, black and white and color alike, display a unique stylish flair not unlike the hip catalogs and advertisements of popular retailers like Anthropologie and Banana Republic. Most notable are her nude photos of women usually between six and eight months pregnant. Always tasteful and never intrusive, these images of moms-to-be could easily appear in a magazine ad or even on a magazine cover.

When Smith hears that, she is quick to point out, “I had my own maternity portrait taken decades before Demi Moore.”

“Before” refers to before former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown and photographer Annie Liebovitz created an uproar when actress Demi Moore appeared nude and seven months pregnant on the cover of the magazine in 1991. For the record, model Cindy Crawford posed nude and pregnant for the cover of W magazine in 1999. Both of these magazine covers helped designate pregnancy as glamorous, but also made these kinds of photographs popular for “regular” women, like Smith’s clients.

Keepsake and Stationery Items
Adding to the stylishness of her work, Smith continues to get mileage out of her photographs by continually creating new and unique custom stationery items that incorporate her photos. Right now, Smith’s range of keepsake options include custom-designed save-the-date cards (pre-wedding invitations that are becoming increasingly popular), wedding invitations, engagement party invitations, thank you notes and baby shower invitations.

Smith makes sure her studio contact information goes on the back of each custom item that’s printed and even re-purposes special photos for use on her own business cards, creating an easy and free way to promote herself. “Give each client 10 business cards featuring one of their best images,” she advises. “I guarantee they’ll pass them on to their friends.”

These days, Smith is capitalizing on the exploding popularity of paper art. Her sunny Santa Monica studio is filled with colorful and beautifully textured Italian and fine art papers, along with a high-quality paper cutter and stacks of unique card stock that she uses to create her custom stationery items. Smith says she “loves the balance between shooting, which is a social activity, and creating custom stationery, which is a more introspective and solitary activity.”

She adds, “Using your clients’ photos to create custom-imaged stationery adds a personal hands-on touch that’s almost certain to pave the way for an extended relationship. It all starts with the engagement, and if that goes well, you can go on to shoot all of the other special family events—weddings, pregnancy portraits, showers, birthdays and anniversaries. Yes, the custom products are all very profitable add-ons, but they’re also additions that couples want and need as keepsakes of these special occasions.”

	A favorite shot from the engagement session is transformed into an elegant wedding invitation.

Smith wasn’t always this business-savvy, and while most life and career changes make for interesting stories, photography wasn’t a totally off-the-wall choice. Smith’s twin brothers are portrait photographers best known for their Hollywood headshots of A-list celebrities like the Olsen twins. And Smith, whose home is lined with family photos—including the one of her pregnant with her daughter—has always been a novice photographer. But it wasn’t until she took a midlife trip to Africa that she began to think of photography as more than a hobby.

Smith’s favorite photographs became postcards and gifts for her friends—many of whom told her she had a great eye.

Transforming a maternity portrait into a Polaroid Image Transfer creates a painterly effect suitable for a hand-assembled baby shower invitation.

Later, while living in Las Vegas and “bonding”—her word—with a boyfriend (who later became her husband) playing poker, she also developed a Vegas-themed card line that was sold locally. She created this card line not by shooting what she saw in casinos, but by setting up a card table with chips and cards in her own living room. Using her daughter as a dealer model, she created cards that were at the same time catchy and admittedly tacky: “As friends go, you’re aces,” “You’re the king of my heart,” “Slots of love on your birthday,” and “It’s your birthday, hope you hit the jackpot.”

	A romantic image from the engagement session is perfectly framed by the die-cut window featured in this unique wedding invitation folio.

Eventually she sold the line to someone in Las Vegas as her tastes “started becoming more sophisticated,” and that’s when she began photographing and designing cards targeted to other niche markets such as winery and resort gift shops. That’s also when she started experimenting with various photographic techniques, and several of those cards featured Polaroid image transfers and SX-70 manipulations

Smith, who teaches workshops in her home studio, creates Polaroid image transfers by separating a Polaroid Type 669 print prematurely, then transferring the negative onto an alternate substrate, like watercolor paper, using warm, moderate pressure. This produces a painterly image that looks something like a fresco. Her SX-70 manipulations are made using Time Zero film and utilizing tools such as a toothpick or stylus to move the emulsion around before it has had an opportunity to harden. This results in an image that is reminiscent of an Impressionist painting.

This authentic moment captured at the wedding reception provides the perfect image for a very personal thank you note.

Smith turned her attention to weddings purely by accident. She was showing some of her images to a wedding photographer neighbor, who liked the work so much she offered Smith an assistant’s gig. It wasn’t long, however, before she was shooting her own weddings, and word soon spread.

To date, Smith has been averaging around eight weddings a year, allowing her custom designs and business cards to continue to speak for themselves. Finding time for yet another venture, Smith has combined her love of photography and keepsake designs to write a book with the working title The Art & Craft of Keepsake Photography (Amphoto/Watson Guptill). The book includes project templates, step-by-step how to projects and images, resources and lush photography. It is due out sometime in late 2006. A second volume on pregnancy, children and families is also in the works and due to be published in spring 2007.

Believe it or not, Smith still juggles a non-creative “day job,” but the way her photographic career is taking off, it may not be for long. Examples of her photography and stationery designs can be found on her web site: www.bsmithphotography.com/.

Photographs copyright © Barbara Smith

Julie Miller is a Los Angeles-based writer and editor.