Photographing in a cold workroom before the van leaves

Floristry produces work that exists for an hour. The arrangement is built, wrapped and delivered, and unless somebody photographed it in that window it is gone — along with the evidence that you can do that particular thing.

The window is early, the room is usually a cold back workroom with no natural light, and there is a delivery schedule.

The setup has to be there already

Anything that involves fetching a backdrop, clearing a bench and finding a lamp will not happen at half past six on a Saturday in February.

Claim a corner: a stool or small table at working height, a plain backdrop behind it, one light on a stand. Never dismantle it.

The arrangement gets carried over, three or four frames, and back to the van. Under a minute, every time.

One light, from the side, at flower height

Workroom lighting is overhead and usually fluorescent, which flattens petals and casts shadows down into the arrangement.

A single soft source at roughly the height of the flowers, from one side and slightly in front, gives you shape, separates the blooms from each other and shows the texture of petals.

Add a white card on the opposite side to lift the shadows. Two pieces of kit, permanently in place, and the lighting problem is solved for every arrangement you ever make.

Backdrops: plain, mid-toned, and matched to your work

Flowers are colourful and detailed. Anything busy behind them competes and loses.

A mid-grey or soft neutral works for almost everything. Very pale backdrops blow out behind white flowers; very dark ones swallow dark foliage.

If your style is consistently light and airy, a white or off-white backdrop is right. If you work with deep, moody palettes, dark grey serves you better. Choose once, based on your actual work rather than on what you see on other florists' feeds.

Photograph at the arrangement's own height

Bouquets and arrangements photographed from above look flat and lose their shape entirely.

Photograph at roughly two-thirds of the height, looking slightly down. This shows the profile, the depth and the way the stems are arranged, which is where the skill is visible.

Turn the arrangement and take a second frame from another side. Arrangements are three-dimensional and one angle rarely captures the work.

Capture the details that took the time

The focal bloom, an unusual stem, the binding point, the ribbon and the wrap all took decisions. Photograph at least one of them close.

For wedding and event work particularly, detail photographs are what convince the next client that you can execute a brief, more than the wide shot does.

Photograph before the water and the wrap

An arrangement in cellophane photographs badly — the plastic reflects and the shape distorts.

If your process wraps immediately, insert a photography step before it. Ten seconds earlier in the process, and the photograph is of the work rather than of packaging.

Colour accuracy is not optional in this trade

Clients choose by colour, and brides in particular hold you to it.

Fluorescent workroom light shifts pinks toward orange and turns cool whites grey. Set white balance manually, check a white flower or a white card on screen, and keep it fixed.

A blush arrangement photographed under warm light looks peach, and a client who booked blush will say so.

Where staging earns its place

The realistic photograph is taken on a workbench under one lamp with a grey backdrop, because that is what exists at six thirty.

Staging places that arrangement into a bright interior, onto a stone surface, into a clean styled setting — while every stem, every bloom, the colour and the shape stay exactly as you built them.

The flowers do not survive the day, but the photograph now looks like it was worth the four hours you spent on the work.