250 Names For A Photography Business (2023 Guide)

If you’re starting a new photography business or even re-branding, coming up with some names for a photography brand can be one of the most time consuming steps.

I went back and forth deciding which was right for me, it was so hard when all the names I liked were already taken.

Instead of getting it right the first time, I picked one I thought was right for me, and ended up changing later, which cost me a lot of time and a small financial cost.

In this article I’ll outline the steps you need to go through to consider when choosing and go through thoroughly before you settle on the right name. Once you go through these considerations you will have the confidence once you’ve finalized your decision to move on to starting your business.

How to Choose a Business Name

When you pick great names for a photography business brand it should make a good impression, enticing the client or customer to move forward with their evaluation of whether they want to use your services.

But when it goes wrong, and you pick an off putting name, you can lose that customer before they even have a chance to see whether your work is great for their needs.

A great name is the hook that grabs the customer, if it can convey a positive impression immediately because it’s catchy or insightful your CTR will be high.

A negative impression means they’ll pass you by. Customers are unforgiving, there is so much competition out there, their first impression is sometimes the only chance you get to convert.

There are two types of naming routes you can go down when choosing to name a photography business:

Eponymously, naming it after yourself.
Using a phrase, with a power word, or an adjective.

The former option is obviously the route I went down, naming my business after myself. The latter needs more thought, and at the end of this article I’ll give you 250+ business name ideas to consider.

1. Naming Your Business After Yourself

This is the simplest and quickest route to go down. It’s a powerful option that is employed by many photographers and artists. There are really persuasive arguments to follow this route:

The client immediately understands this person is the brand, they know your name which reflects transparency and legitimacy.
You can establish yourself as a person of authority. If you can become a leader/teacher in your field, you can eventually be recognized as a person to look to as an authority in your photography field. You can’t do this as well if the business name is not your name.
What I mean by this is with a business named after a phrase, the client doesn’t know anything about you yet. With an eponymously named business you’re not ‘hiding’ yourself behind a brand.
Naming a photography business after yourself adds some personability, when a client calls, they know who they should be talking to.
If you want to be the face of the business, naming a photography business after yourself adds an extra layer of brand strengthening. Clients recognize your face or your name, and can then link the two.

However there are some disadvantages to this route:

Conversely if you want to keep a portion of anonymity, omitting your name from the business provides that.
If it’s a business you may possibly sell one day, you will also be selling your name as part of the brand.
Using your name limits your potential to go into different markets. A more generic name might be better if this is a possible route for your business.
Your name might be hard to spell. Harder to spell means you may lose clients unable to find you if they are searching on the internet after only hearing your name, not knowing the correct spelling.
Your name might also be hard to pronounce. My name, Punio, is often spelt and pronounced wrongly. Phonetically it is pronounced ‘Poon-Yo’. Pronouncing issues is solved by strengthening your brand. But even then, can you pronounce Adidas correctly?
Names are usually quite long, even a short name will be longer than the shortest phrase name. For example Nike has four characters, not many names can be this length.
You may have a very common name, and your name may already be associated with another brand positively or even negatively.

2. Tips for Creating a Business Name

Should you decide to forgo the self naming route, I have a few tips to consider first!

Make Your Name SEO Friendly

When you name your business, the most popular suffix photographers add is ‘photography’ after their chosen name.

Adding Photography, Studio or Photos or something photography related allows you to add an important SEO keyword to your URL.

Google’s algorithm needs certain pointers to understand what your website is about. The first thing the Google crawlers see is the URL.

Putting the keyword there adds strength to your website in Google’s eyes as they can see the first thing on show is that the website is about photography.

This means Google now understands where and to who to show your website. If they didn’t know Google would reduce your ranking. Helping Google moves you up in SERP.

Google will also use other factors to help determine the website niche and topic, but hitting all the right makes good SEO practice.

The reason I personally add photography, is that my website is not solely for photographers, but for all creatives. My strategy is to make my name a strong brand name in itself.

Choose a Shareable Name

This can be a difficult one, but if you can pick a catchy name that rolls off the tongue easily, it will be much easier for anyone hearing it to remember.

‘The Lens Knight’ just sounds cool. If that was my business name I am sure more people would remember that, because the initial impression would be a positive one. If it provokes interest, it is even more memorable.

Picking a name that’s hard to pronounce or sounds unfamiliar will be easy to forget. If my business name was ‘Worcestershire Photographicals’ I’m pretty sure most people would struggle to remember it or pronounce it without hearing it from me (My apologies to any photographers working in Worcestershire).

So if the name sounds cool, or funny, or provokes a question, that usually means it’s a good name that will register in the memory.

Use Rhyming Names

Rhyming is a popular form of word play that makes it easier for the client to remember. To do this put too similar sounding related words together. For example Jack’s Snaps or Dot’s Shots.

Does it Look Good?

Rhyming usually sounds good, regardless of whether you’re using rhyming or not, ask yourself does it sound good? And if it does, does it look good?

When you have your name, does it look good in your logo and design? Maybe it’s too long? Too many words?

Names That Will Stand the Test of Time

Do not pick a name that has some kind of trending word in the name. When you are naming a photography business you must make sure the name has perennial relevance, i.e. it still sounds good in 50 years.

Classic names are words like Studio, Pictures, Photos etc.

You have to find a balance between leveraging familiarity which is a positive feeling while also not being too derivative and sounding like just another photographer.

The answer to that is wrongly to look to trendy names. This is a huge mistake that you will only understand in time, when the name becomes untrendy.

By then you will have put too much investment and time into your brand; the cost of which will be rebranding.

Brand names in a mid-2000s trend removed a vowel: Tumblr, Flickr, Twttr (renamed to Twitter), Grindr etc. These now sound not old fashioned by today’s standard.

But we aren’t really learning, today’s trend is adding a -ify suffix: Spotify, Shopify, Listify etc. The -ify means ‘to make’ or ‘cause to be’, but what’s the chances these sound outdated in ten years?

Pick a Name with Meaning

This is another difficult one, but if you can get one that has some meaning to it or to you, it will be all the more endearing to you.

Let’s say you specialize in quick turnaround weddings, a great name could be ‘Shotgun Wedding Photography’. You have meaning with the term ‘Shotgun’, so a customer will understand this photographer specializes in quick weddings.

And you have your SEO keyword for the search engine algorithms to understand this website is about photography. Click the link if you want to know more about SEO for photographers.

You may even have a completely unrelated phrase that has personal meaning to you that you could use. There is nothing wrong with this, plenty of photographers have done this and continue to do well with SEO and branding.

You just have to do as I am doing, and continue to strengthen your brand.

Get Feedback

Sometimes we need a different set of ears to use as a barometer when we decide on a name.

If you settle on some great names for a photography business, but everyone you ask thinks it’s not good, you need to take that feedback on the chin and figure out why that is. Did you miss something?

Another thing to do is a technique artists do, once you settle on a name, don’t go out straight away and purchase the domain name and order some business cards. Sleep on it, see if you still feel as strongly about it in the morning.

Sometimes we need to step back for a while to get perspective on a name we choose.

Does It Sound Good?

Following on from getting feedback. Think about how it sounds. As I write this, the example I gave earlier, Shotgun Wedding Photography, could pose some issues.

Specifically the use of the phrase Shotgun. You could possibly rank for the wrong keywords for one, and secondly some algorithms like YouTube’s will ban words like this thinking it is related to the actual firearm weapon, instead of say a shotgun microphone.

Another consideration is the sound of your name in another language, we’ve all seen in some funny FaceBook posts how some words in one language translate to something funny is another.

Siemens Mobile, Big Wood Furniture, HouseOfHose.com, Fuchs.com come to mind. I won’t elaborate why…

Choose an Easy to Spell Name

If I told you my name without you ever seeing it written, could you spell it? Justin is easy, but what about Punio?

Obviously this is an issue I have to accept, unless I go and change it by deed poll!

But if you have a choice, this is a consideration to have. Even familiar words can be hard to spell, making for poor names for a photography business.

People looking for a photographer or any service will want the quickest and easiest route to what they need. They aren’t lazy, well some are, they just want the right information now.

It’s your job to make it easy for a client to find your website and services, and convert them to a client. It’s not their job.

This means they have no time to spend figuring out how to spell your name into the URL bar.

If I hear about two great photographers recommended to me that I should hire next are ‘Picturesque Psychology Studio’ or ‘Tip Top Photography’, guess which one I check out first on Google?

If Tip Top Photography ticks all the boxes and makes it easy for me to set up a photo shoot, do you think I will also check out Psycho… whatsitsname? Exactly.

Be the first choice.

Use Naming Resources

Much as I’d like you to use this article as your main source of information for choosing how you name a photography business, that would not be honest of me. You will and should consult other sources.

One such resource is Onym, a multi resource system that has a collection of dictionaries, thesauruses, name generators and other tools.

Another great tool is Answer the Public, this can be used for all sorts of things, not just photography name ideas, for example this is great for SEO keywords.

Conduct a Trademark Search (US and UK)

As with everything to do with business, you have to make sure you cross all the Ts and dot all the Is in legal matters.

So make sure before you ahead with any name to conduct a quick search to make sure no one has chosen one of your names for a photography business.

To do this go to Google and type in ‘Your State + Secretary of State Business Search’. From here you can conduct a search to see if someone has already registered your photography business name ideas.

These are the links:

USA Trademark Search

UK Trademark Search

Domain Name

Get a .com remove www.? I touch on this back in my article about starting a photography business where you can get more tips for your business.

Once you have conducted your research and decided on your some good names for a photography business to consider, you will also need a domain name.

Before anything you need to check domain availability.

I would recommend choosing .com as this is the most popular. This can be a issue; remember what I said about making it easy for clients to find you quick and easily?

Now imagine this scenario: they only know your brand name from hearing it, and they have a minute spare to go to google, maybe they think it’s quicker to not search but go directly to the website.

They type in your brand name and try .com. Doesn’t work, ok still a few seconds left, let’s try .co.uk. Nope. Ok forget it, let’s just search …your domain was .photography.

This client obviously has the patience, they must have buyer intent, but what if they’re semi curious? They probably will give up after .com. You may only get one search attempt from them.

The point I am making here is do not make it hard for your clients to find you. It is not their job to work out if you’re using .com or .co.uk or .org.

It’s your job to make it easy for them to find you! That might mean you buy the .com and the .co.uk, .org .info .photography and so on. So the chances of them going direct is 100x more easy for them.

Make sure with a good SEO strategy you are showing up number one in Google.

Naming Problems to Avoid

Throughout this article I have highlighted issues to avoid when choosing names for a photography business. But I want to consolidate and expand on more of them in this section for your reference:

Hard to spell names – as I said, Punio is not an easy one, but unavoidable for me. If it’s an option for you, pick easy to spell names.
Rude Language – this is obvious. Make sure your name is professional.
Avoid Trends – Don’t sound outdated in ten years.
Hard to remember words – Make it simple, use word association or something catchy to get it ingrained in the memory banks.
Not too long – Similar to above, the longer the name is, the more there is to remember. Short names are simpler.
Avoid hard to pronounce words – SeashellsontheseashorePhotos.com or BicesterCountyPhotographics.com aren’t exactly easy roll off the tongue names. Say it out loud to yourself and ask other people to gauge reaction.
Social Media – For clarity, it is best to have a name that is available on all social media platforms. So claiming all your social media real estate is essential. Having one unavailable means having to have two usernames; unless you can purchase it.

Name Suffixes

With these name suggestions, to get even more ideas, consider changing the ‘suffix’, alternating between:

Photography
Pictures
Studio
Photos
Photo Studio
Photo Shop
Portraits

So if my chosen name is London Car, I can add on Photography, or Pictures, or Studio etc.

Another tip is to add a power word, or a positive adjective to the beginning, like Best, Great, Lovely, Amazing etc.

Using these two additions, the 250 plus suggested photography names are multiplied by a hundred fold! This is more than enough to avoid using a business name generator, which are too random in my opinion.

Check out some creative names for a photography business below: