Jay & Lisa's Rural Farm Engagement Session

A couple of weeks ago, I headed out to Brownsville for Jay & Lisa's engagement session. After a long and relaxing drive down a winding country road, I pulled into Jay's sprawling farm. It was gorgeous! We had a great time going to different locations on the farm, and here are some of my favorites from the session! I'm excited to shoot their wedding here in a couple of months.

Loren & Stacey Downtown Memphis Tennessee Engagement Session

One thing that I really worried about when I opened my business, and especially when I rebranded, was whether people would be able to find me. Will I show up in Google searches? Will anyone see my Facebook posts (no)? Will anyone recommend me? I still wonder these things, but at least in the case of Loren and Stacey, I know I'm coming up in Google search! Stacey looked at photographers in Little Rock, where the wedding will be, and then decided to expand to nearby cities, which is when she found my site. At first I thought "Oh she's in Little Rock, she won't want to hire me." But lo and behold, she did, and boy oh boy am I glad! We met up for their consultation and engagement session one afternoon in Memphis and instantly clicked.

They are so down-to-earth and easy to talk to, I felt like we'd been friends forever! After talking about some details for their wedding day in December, we took a stroll down close to the river for photos. I am so pleased with how these turned out, especially because they were in Memphis. Most of my photos are from the Jackson area, so it's nice to have different scenery.   

As of earlier today, my site was on the first page of the Google search for "jackson tn wedding photographer" which is what I would search if I were looking for me. Does that make sense? I need to find out if there are other search terms I should be targeting, because obviously what I'm doing is working! I could not possibly be more thankful that Stacey happened upon my site, because I'm so excited to capture their wedding day.

If you're wondering what I've been doing to get my website seen more, here are some basics:

• Use alt tags on your images. This is not only good for SEO, but it's helpful for people using screen readers (hearing-impaired)
• Use descriptive terms in your website title tag and blog post titles
• Link to your site from Facebook and twitter occasionally, and Pin photos from your site. 
• Get on Google Plus. You don't have to monitor it since there's not much interaction going on there, but at least link your blog posts.

I am by no means an SEO guru, but those things have helped me along the way. I still have a lot more to do, such as update this blog to reflect my new biz name. I'll put that on the to-do list!

Vince & Heather's Outdoor Engagement Session

Before I talk about Vince and Heather's adorable engagement shoot, let me direct your attention to that HOT NEW URL/LOGO on my photos. I finally changed my business name and rebranded! I decided to change from Kristi McMurry Photography for a few reasons...mainly because, duh, I got married forever ago! Another reason is because there are several other photographers in my town with a name like Kristi/Kristen/Kristina, and they're all awesome. I felt that I needed to set myself apart, and a name change was a good way to do that. Woody is my new last name and Pearl is my grandmother's middle name, which I love. I guess that's the short story! I am so excited about it, and I am also using the same branding for my new vintage rental business. I'll post more about that later, but for now you can check out the FB page.

Ok, so on to Vince and Heather! These two are so.dang.sweet. I met with Heather and her mom at the beginning of the year, and we instantly hit it off. I could tell from the start that I would enjoy working with them, and so far I definitely have! We met at this lovely house in downtown Jackson and shot their photos around the outside. Heather's bright shirt really helped brighten up the photos since we were shooting in the dead of winter. Good choice, Heather!

Vince and Heather were both totally natural in front of the camera, which made my job easy!  I loved how sweet they were together. I also had a pretty stellar assistant with me that day, Travis Wyatt. I am so pumped for Travis and I to shoot their big day in May! I'm also really excited to be able to share Heather's bridal portraits after the wedding. We shot them last week and I LOVE THEM. It's killing me not to share them, but I think I can make it. ha! 

Fall Engagement (Yes, I'm Always Behind)

I shot these back in the Fall, but I was pretty busy back then, so I never got around to blogging them. Matt and Jessica are getting married this June, and I'm so excited to shoot their wedding! Matt and I went to elementary school together, and I was totally on board when he asked me if I could document their big day. It's always fun reconnecting with people from childhood! I actually just booked a wedding with another friend from my childhood church. She even got me going to the gym she goes to!

Jessica had a pretty clear vision of what she wanted, so I tried to capture that for her. I am really pleased with how they turned out! I was hoping for a sunny day to get some great backlighting, but the overcast look ended up being really nice. Looking at these now, I'm really missing the greenery and the warmth. It's just been so frigid out lately!

Matt and Jessica are both very fit and exercise together, so we incorporated that into their shoot. Of course by the time we got to those it was almost too dark, so I had to break out the speedlite. All things considered, I think they're cute :) We tried to get a couple of Kolbie (the dog) running with them, but she was a little too excited about it. I LOVED shooting some with Kolbie though, and I kind of wish all of my couples had pups to use in their engagement sessions. Ever since getting Chipper, I have been 100% obsessed with dogs.

I hope you all enjoyed these shots! I am moving toward only doing weddings and wedding related portraits (engagement, bridal) in the near future, so I'm hoping to really hone my skills in that area. Of course I'll also put focus on product and promotional work, but as there isn't much demand for that around here, it's a secondary focus.