IT’S HEEEEEEERE!

Why hello there! Welcome to my BRAND NEW BLOG. With a BRAND NEW LOGO. And a BRAND NEW WEBSITE to match! Okay, too many capital letters, I know. But I can’t tell you how absolutely ecstatic I am to reveal this new look. Web presence is a huge part of making it in the photography industry, and I really feel like this is going to do a lot for me. I hope you agree!

So over the past few years it seems there has been a trend toward the “blogsite.” And I was more than happy to jump on that bandwagon, because it meant that I wouldn’t have to put forth the effort to make a “real” website, and hey, if you offer me one more thing to cross off my to-do list, I’ll take it! And for my initial growth over the past year or so, having only a blog has worked perfectly for me. I learned the perils of pouring too much of your time and resources into branding early on, because I feel like I’m only beginning to really know who I am and how I want to be represented. So my DIY attempts were just fine for awhile. But then, at WPPI this year, Jasmine Star said something in her presentation that really stood out to me: “My website is my handshake, and my blog is my voice.” And regardless of how you feel about her and her “rockstar” status, I think she made a very valid point. She said that she really didn’t want a potential bride’s first impression of her to be a post about her dog Polo, which is what might show up front and center when someone lands on the front page of her blog. And that really resonated with me. By now you know that I have a tendency to ramble on, and do I want a complete stranger and potential client’s first impression of me to be “Wow. Does she know when to shut up?!” Nope, not really. Don’t get me wrong, my blog is my voice. I want to be able to share the ins and outs of my life and my business with you in an honest and candid way. However, for a first impression, I finally came to the conclusion that I needed something with a little more…. OOMPH. A website that is easy to navigate and pretty to look at. A place where clients can easily access my contact information and portfolio samples. And I think I have found it. I present to you the brand-spankin’-new MORGANTRINKER.COM!

Go check it out, have a peek around, and let me know what you think! I’m always working to improve the client experience, so I am more than open to comments, suggestions, and concerns.

So I can’t post a reveal of all of this without giving quite a few shout outs to the key players in this brand overhaul:

Laura Condouris of Trial By Cupcakes

What can I say about Laura other than I AM IN LOVE WITH HER? When I began thinking about where I wanted the new direction of my logo to go, the only thing I wanted beyond a shadow of a doubt was something handwritten. Not a handwritten font, mind you, but a completely custom hand-drawn logo. Something that wouldn’t also be used by every other joe blow photographer out there who knows how to open up a text box in Photoshop. My search for the perfect calligrapher to do the job led me to Laura. It had never occurred to me to seek out a calligrapher, rather than just a graphic designer, to design a logo, until I saw Bonnie Tsang‘s logo designed by Anna Bond of Rifle Paper Co. I was totally smitten. So when I stumbled randomly upon Laura’s website, I knew it had to be her. And my intuition couldn’t have been more dead on! No joke, the day I emailed her, she emailed me back with a sketch of a potential logo. Almost immediately. I couldn’t believe it. And she was all “I saw the picture of you on your blog header with that little Diana camera and I had to incorporate it.” I never would’ve thought to do that, but it works perfectly! I adore the look of my name in calligraphy, and how the camera straps become the letters. I also love that it’s kind of girly, but still with a very graphic punch. It reminds me of old-school tattoos…. LOVE. I also asked her to design some sort of seamless background to use with the logo, and she whipped up this gorgeous watercolor vintage-y floral pattern out of nowhere, using the colors I suggested. Honestly, it was all so much more than I could have ever imagined. I cannot recommend Laura enough.

Mike and Sam of KanzlerFoto

Many of you know that I have a very strong friendship with Mike and Sam, and we’ve grown so much together as people and as photographers together over the past year or so. I will miss them more than I could ever tell them when I move to Birmingham. So I asked them if they would want to do a headshots swap a few months back, and they were of course more than willing. (Remember their session we did? Loved it!) So I decided I wanted to do a styled shoot, and my vision was a big tree, out in the middle of the boons, and essentially lots of vintage-y, Southern goodness. For weeks I collected knick knacks at thrift stores and agonized over what outfits to where. Of course I dragged Jamie and Gretchen along and made them be in it too. Mike and Sam have this amazing old green door that I wanted to use as a table, so I bought a set of tacky oak-paneled filing cabinets from the DI and we sanded and painted them a canary yellow… and then sanded them again to make them match the oldness of the door. :) The day of the shoot, we all hauled out to a place Mike had stumbled upon a few weeks earlier, and it was pretty much perfect. Perfect tree, perfect weather, perfect. And by we I also mean…..

Josh Maguire (with the help of Erica!)

(He doesn’t have a site or else I would link to it.) Josh goes to church with all of us at K2, and he does a lot of shooting and editing video, so Mike and I approached him one day about doing some promo video action for us. So he and Erica also came along for the ride out to the boons, after we all shared an appropriately Southern meal of KFC fried chicken and the works, and they shot video while Mike and Sam shot stills. It was a real production, let me tell ya! I felt like we were on a movie set. I just remember thinking, in the middle of all the setting up and shooting and filming, about how lucky I am to have the talented friends that I do. As you can see, Josh did a fantastic job with the video, and whittled it down to all my specifications, and I just adore it. I’ve watched it approximately 158 times since Thursday, when I got the final version.

And finally, David Jay of ShowIt Sites

When Jasmine was giving her presentation on web presence, it was obvious that she had a major affiliation with ShowIt. After all, David Jay was the one who shot her wedding and inspired her to start a business of her own. And I have to admit that I’ve always been a little wary of anything coming from the SoCal rockstar photography scene. And David Jay is a huge part of that network. So I was very resistant to the idea of getting a ShowIt site solely out of stubbornness and some vague notion of “principle” for a long time. But then, after seeing template website after template website, I knew I needed something different. So I finally came to my senses and realized that ShowIt was the way to go. Even though there is a monthly fee, it is worth every penny. Before this software existed, to get a custom, non-template website, you would have to go through a web designer to do all of your design work and coding for you… every single time you wanted to change something. Let me tell you, that gets really expensive. What David created really does give photographers absolute freedom. With ShowIt, I can design my own website using elements that I have created in Photoshop along with a variety of widgets and functions included in the software, and then the team does all of the back-end coding for me. AMAZING. It is completely what-you-see-is-what-you-get and pretty much dummy-proof. If I can figure it out, I guarantee you can. Go check it out for sure, because I have zero regrets about going with ShowIt. And I am not a rockstar photographer making the big bucks, so my opinion is coming from a place of complete transparency. I wouldn’t recommend it if I didn’t believe in it. Some computer people will argue that it is all Flash-based and therefore not okay, since the whole Adobe vs. Apple war means that Flash sites aren’t viewable on iPhones or iPads. But David has recently unveiled a new aspect of the software which allows you to create a mobile-device-friendly version of your site using HTML5. I haven’t created mine yet, but I’m really excited about the possibilities as far as that goes.

So yeah…. I think that about covers it! I am just so excited about this. Seriously. I’ve also been working on redo-ing all of my packaging to match this, which some of you have gotten a sneak peek of recently. I can’t wait to slap this logo all over anything and everything I can. Because I love it. Finally…. a logo I really, truly love.

**** ONE FINAL NOTE TO FELLOW PHOTOGRAPHERS: If you are in the process of creating a website and you’re thinking about whether or not you should, I would highly recommend reading this article: “An open letter to wedding photographers regarding their websites.” Coming from a non-photographer who is in the wedding industry and has to look at TONS of photographers’ websites, I think this is one of the most helpful site critiques I’ve ever seen. It definitely kicked me in the butt and inspired me to tweak lots of things to make my web presence much more client-friendly. Some of the comments get a little ridiculous, but overall, there are lots of valid points made that I think we, as photographers, just don’t think about.