Wedding Things; branding; the biz

July 13th, 2010 | filed under: Personal, photog talk | tags: , , , , |

Being professional and also open about your learning seems to be two things that don’t usually go together in the photography industry.  From the start, my plan has to been to turn jonyoder.com into my business site.  Since I haven’t always had a clear plan for where my business is heading, this blog has mainly just been a place to put the photos and ideas that I come up with, having only thoughts of doing photography professionally here and there.

The idea that seems to be most prevalent nowadays is to “fake it ’till you make it” in your business, while also having a personal side that people can relate to.  I understand this concept–you want to make your potential client confident in your ability to deliver something of quality in a professional manor.  So, even if you’re making things up as you go, you should do it with the confidence as though you’ve been doing it that way forever.

This mindset might sound weird to some of you.  Maybe it sounds wrong to show confidence when you aren’t sure or always trying to look/sound professional.  Personally, I’m choosing to be mostly open in my learning of the ins and outs of wedding photography.  It isn’t that I think different ways or what I’m used to seeing is bad, but I’m just choosing to be open about my learning simply because that’s the way I want to do it.

I’ve always been pretty open about things, so why stop now?  There could be many different good answers to that question…but for now, I’m just posting what I do.  What I learn.  Today it’s logo, website, and style choices.

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time looking through different fonts to put together a logo.  As of now, I’m thinking: Jon Yoder Photographer | weddings & portraiture.  Pretty elaborate, right?  :)

I know that photographs speak louder than websites, fonts, styles, and logos, but being a perfectionist, I spend a lot of time trying to get things, well, perfect (except that I never am 100% happy with the way I make it).  I follow quite a few wedding photographers, and a decent amount of them have websites that are kinda hideous (I’m not going to name anyone :-) ).  Yet they still seem to be doing fine–I guess brides know that they aren’t getting a website made for them or a book of some terrible font, they’re getting the photographs.  That’s not to say that the presentation doesn’t matter, it certainly does, but you can sometimes still do alright without a strong website.

All this brings me to the things that I still need to work out:

  • I don’t know my unique style.  I’ve been tending toward more natural vs. lots of photoshop work lately, but I think it’s good to have more of a distinctive style than just the way you shoot.
  • I haven’t settled on a logo.  Or a watermark.
  • This goes with the last point–but I also want to change up the website a bit and have a style that goes across my whole brand.

There are definitely more things, but those points are what I’ve been thinking of most.

My favorite wedding photography brands (as far as websites / styles / design goes) and inspiration:

  • Mindcastle // amazing style.  I really like their name, defined style, video work, & creativity.
  • Red Leaf Studios // I like the leaf in the logo…and the background, and the photography.  ;)
  • Stacy Reeves // Really great style.  :)  I like the brightness and the patterns.
  • Matthew Saville // One of the few photographers that uses dark theme/light text.  I like the fonts and color choice. Great guy and mentor.
  • Jasmine Star // obligatory.
  • Jon Yoder // The color blue…the simplicity, the experience…wow–haha, I’ll stop now.  :)

I’m always going to aim high.  Where that will get me, I don’t know, but I suppose you’ll find out how it’s going soon enough.  =)

~ Jon