When I started my wedding photography business a few years ago, I didn’t put much thought into selecting a name. I simply selected Jamie M Swanson Photography because it worked at the time and the domain was available.
However, last year my husband Brandon started shooting with me, and we found out that he’s ridiculously talented. He fell in love with it almost instantly. Soon we decided to become a husband and wife photography team. After one too many “Does he work for YOU?” jokes, we decided that a name change was in order.
Since it’s something we did recently, I thought I’d share some tips on things to consider when choosing a name for your business.
Should you use your name?
Using your name is generally a fairly safe bet when it comes to naming your business. It’s personable and is often quite unique. Most of the well-known photographers out there use their name alone as their business name.
While there are plenty of benefits to using your name, it does hinder you from easily adding more photographers or eventually selling your business. While you may never get to this point, if you ever decide to go in that direction it is helpful to select a business name that is not tied to your own name.
And to all those single ladies out there who hope to get married, using your last name can put you in an awkward place once you’ve tied the knot.
Business names that are NOT your own name
My first rule when picking a name that is not your own personal name is to keep it from being cheesy. This is obviously objective, but the younger generation tends to see names that try to evoke too many emotions as old-school in a bad way. Instead of “Treasured Memories” consider something that doesn’t have an emotion tied to it.
Inanimate objects or memorable terms tend to be more attractive to a modern clientele. Whitebox and Poser come to mind as a successful photographers who have managed to pull this off really well.
Another approach is to create a name that is not actually a real word. A great example of this is Jinky Art. While I’ve only heard them mentioned once or twice before, the name sticks with me and I think it was a brilliant choice.
The hard part about this route is that there’s a good chance that there are many other photography businesses out there with a similar name or the exactly the same name that you might fall in love with. You will want to research all names you consider to make sure no one within your geographic location is already using that same name.
Choosing a domain name
You will also want to consider if the domain name is available for you to use. As much as we may have loved certain variations of some of the names we came up with, we had to change things up here and there because we simply couldn’t get a domain name for it that we liked.
Are you okay with having a site named “www.mynamephotography.com” if someone else already owns “www.mynamephotos.com” and “www.mynamephotographers.com”? You’ll have to be very clear in your marketing and business cards to avoid people heading to the wrong site on accident, and you’ll want to be diligent in your SEO efforts as well to make sure your name ranks as high as possible in search engines.
I would also completely avoid anything other than the .com or .co.uk or any other standard ending for your country. Let’s face it: people forget the .net and type .com first and foremost, so I highly suggest sticking to the most popular ending for your domain name.
Finally, adding some variation of the word photography in your web address will help it rank higher in search results when people search for “photography”, but at the same time you don’t want your domain name to be so long that people get annoyed when typing it in. You’ll have to play this one by ear and see what is available.
The name we chose…
After taking all these things into consideration, we decided on Lemon Tree Photographers. It ties in my favorite color (yellow) to our desire to have something that could represent our growing family. Plus the idea of a lemon tree in Wisconsin is a bit quirky since they don’t grow in our climate, and we liked that connotation. We’ll have to be clear in our branding so people aren’t going to the other domain variations of it, but we’re willing to give it a try.
How did you choose your name, or what has the process been like for you so far? Leave a comment below and let us know!
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{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
I hope this article reaches a lot of new bloggers and entrepreneurship who are looking to set up their web businesses. This is a great source of help.
Thanks Eddie! You can help it reach new bloggers by using the social media sharing buttons at the bottom of the post!
We always appreciate it!
Cool! I went with my name because when I was photog-hunting I always preferred business names that sounded like a real person. And all the big-name photographers in my area use their names as business names. So I did the same.
I think it’s a great option to use your name as well. I just wish I had known that Brandon would be joining me before I chose it as it doesn’t fit now. Not excited about the process of changing our name, but I know it will be good for us.
Lemon Tree Photographers sounds so cute! Can’t wait to see your new site!
Thanks! I can’t wait to get it finished. This site took a “bit” longer than I expected, so I put it off for awhile. It’s coming, though, hopefully before summer!
I thought my name would be too difficult for people but when I met with a small business advisor she said she’s smack me if I went with anything else (ok not really) because my name is memorable and ‘arty’. And it is. I had a bride book me last year half because she thought my name was cool so I must be cool, too (as it happens, she’s right!).
I registered just my name as a domain so that if I decide to stop pursuing photography, I have a non-specific domain for my use.
Now that I’ve started a new collaboration with another photographer, we have combined our surnames (Frost&Roxburgh) but our URL is froxy.com.au – we wanted something short and snappy that fits with our branding.
Froxy is AWESOME! I love it! And your name definitely is cool (although I admit that I’d have no idea how to pronounce it and would probably embarrass myself trying…)
Great article, clear and easy to follow. We too are a husband and wife team of photographers. Its took a few days deciding on our name. Had to be something snappy and memorable – not easy with a popular name like Smith!
After much searching and being disappointed with many favourite options already taken we next decided on picsmiths but then soon changed to the more modern spelling of PIXSMITHS. Its a sort of play on words, pixels being the tool of our trade in digital photography, it the modern word for pictures, smiths is an old term used for craftsman in the UK – so a craft with pixels. Its part of our name – We are Mr and Mrs Smith but don’t want people to think we are assassins (as in the film) and also we hope people will pick us!
So that was our thought process
I chose Ollievision as a name for my son’s website and registered it for him after he was born in 2002. As time went by, I took up the various email addresses available too. It was, and I believe, still is a unique user name. I imagined that when he was an adult everyone would have their own website.
Then, as I began to take on more photography work, I “borrowed” Ollievision from him! Our agreement is that he will be given .com when he’s older and I will keep .co.uk!
I love hearing about how people came up with their business names. So interesting.
Out of curiosity, how old is your son?
Thank you for writing this article. I’m just starting out with photography and was trying to think of a name. My name was already taken for a business (Michelle Leigh). I came up with Macill Photography…it’s a play on my kids’ names.
You’re welcome! Thanks for commenting.
Love the name you came up with! It’ll make you smile every time someone asks about its meaning.