The Name Game

Recently I’ve a had a few people asking me about the name of my business, and how/why I chose it. So I figured I’d blog about it. Because it’s kind of a long story. Nothing super deep, or anything. More just the train of thought that brought me to it. But because it’s kind of long, and quite possibly only interesting/amusing to me, here’s the short version:

Using my own name wasn’t going to cut it, and Dulce just fit on so many levels.

That’s pretty much it. Of course, a little more thought was involved. (My random brain running a million miles an hour can come up with some pretty interesting stuff.) But that’s a decent summarization. I think, anyhow. If, though, you are indeed interested in the long version, go ahead and read on : )

It started on a random sunny weekend during my senior year in college. I had just second shot my very first wedding and had the revelation that this is what I want to do with my life, so I figured I better get cracking on a name. Because we all know identity in this business is everything, and what’s an identity without a name? So I started with the obvious… my own name.

First option, Carissa Sarah Joy Photography. (Yep, I have two middle names.) Well that just sounded like a mouthful. I mean, if the name of your business is long enough that you get bored saying the whole thing, chances are other people will too. So yeah. First option nixed. Moving along to the second option: Fine Photography. For those of you who don’t know, my maiden name is Fine. (And yes, I’ve heard all the jokes… a few of my favorites: “How are you doing today? Fine, I assume?”, “Man, you’ve got fine written all over you!”, “You did a fine job, Fine!” Hilarious, lol. Anyways.) I decided to trash this option for two reasons, one being I knew that my last name would be changing in a year or so, and the other being the CHEESE FACTOR. Because really, how cheesy is the name Fine Photography? Waaaay too cheesy for my taste. I don’t even really like cheese. (Except mozzarella. That stuff is delicious.) This brings us to my final option: Carissa Uribe Photography. Well, that wasn’t going to work because no one knows how to say Uribe the first time they read it. And even sometimes after they hear it. Which is fine. (No pun intended.) After all, it’s not the easiest name to figure out, especially considering there are two pronunciations. The Spanish version (Oo-ree-bay), and the English version (You-ree-bee). (I’m great at phonetics, I know.) We normally use that latter, if you were wondering. Anyhow, all of that to say, my name wasn’t going to work.

Phew. Still with me?

After I had exhausted all options using my name, I knew I needed to branch out. First, I thought about tangible objects. Green Apple Photography, Blue Couch Photography,  Brown Cow Photography. (That last one was a joke.) But I realized I was just using names that either a.) I had already heard of, and/or b.) I thought sounded cool, but had nothing to do with me. Like, at all. And I knew I wanted my name to be reflective of me and my work. So I started to consider what feelings I wanted to evoke in people when they heard my name. The words that kept coming back to me most were classy, romantic, and fresh. Train of thought in my head said “What’s more romantic, more classy, than another language?” Which brought me into a frantic search for romantic words in French, in Spanish, in Italian, etc. At first, I wasn’t coming up with anything of substance. The obvious choices included Amor or Amore, but that was a little too obvious for me, and I wanted try to and find something no one had used before. Not as easy as it sounds. Needless to say, I was struggling.

Then I called Jake. When I ask Jake for help or ideas, I basically never use any advice he gives. He knows this. I know this. He’ll shoot me a few ideas, all of which I turn down or disagree with. This begs the question, why do I even ask? It’s not that his ideas aren’t good. Most of the time. (I kid.) It’s more that they’re not mine. I ask him in order to help me get my mind going in a new direction, to get it unstuck from the ideas I’m stuck on. This time, however, when I asked him for help, he gave me the most brilliant idea ever. And he wasn’t even trying. “Why don’t you do something with food? You love food so much!” he joked. Well, he was right. I started thinking about food, which of course turned specifically into desserts, and that lead me to Dulce de Leche Cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory. One of my faves. Then I was all “You’re a GENIUS!!!! Gotta go, loveyoubye!” Click.

Dulce. It means “sweet” in Spanish. How perfect. Sweet has so many different connotations. There’s the literal sweet, like sweet dessert, which is perfect for me because I have one of the most ridiculous sweet tooths you’ll ever see. Then there’s sweet like, “Awwww, that’s the sweetest proposal I’ve ever heard of!” kind of sweet. Romantic, precious, sweet. They all go hand in hand. Awesome. There’s even the somewhat slang version, such as “Dude, that wave was sweeeeet!” (Ok, maybe surfers don’t talk like that. It’s not the 80’s and I’m clearly not a surfer. But you get my point.) Dulce. It was perfect. The only other decision I had to make was do I want the Spanish version dulce (dull-say), or the Italian version dolce (dohl-chay)? That was an easy choice for me because Jake is half Colombian (even though you’d never ever guess it by looking at him lol), and the reason I thought of the word at all was because of Dulce de Leche cheesecake. Sure, sometimes people pronounce it incorrectly, but I could live with that.

And thus, Dulce Photography was born.

So that’s my story. The very long-winded and drawn out version. It’s awesome, I know. Haha. And because every post is better with a picture, here’s what I had for breakfast!

Nutella and Banana Toast. Good for the soul. What did you have for breakfast?

And here are a few shots of the beautiful sunrise I got to watch while eating said breakfast.

Life is good. Hope everyone has a great Monday!

P.S. Don’t forget to enter for a chance to win a free shoot!! : )