Announcing Urban Grey Photography, A Sister Company

Today I have extremely exciting news. For months, I have been stressing over the difficulty of a wedding client who visited the blog during a season when I was shooting lots of kids and families.  Some people are big blog followers and could easily figure out how to navigate their way through the categories and archives. My concern was for those who would be frustrated by it all and not want to sort through posts they weren’t interested in.  (And vice versa too – portrait clients were also having to see lots of weddings over the last few months when all they really wanted was to see how I photograph children.)  I also didn’t want to quit photographing one or the other; I knew that wasn’t the solution because I find both types of work are such a good balance for me.

I knew immediately that the solution for me was to break Magan’s Lens into segments, but at the time I wasn’t sure how that would work. I finally decided sometime in June that I wanted weddings to be a sister company to Magan’s Lens, but for them not to fall under the same business name.  For the life of me, I could not decide what I wanted the new branch to be called. I didn’t want anything cheesy or too cliche. Dustyn and I would use long car rides together to listen to music for inspiration – to listen to how great verses were strung together. Nothing came.  I wasn’t sure that it would happen and I was not willing to start the new project until I was 100% happy with where it was going.

The day Amber Snow photographed Dustyn and I in August, she was following up about my plans for the new business. She and I had discussed everything on the plane ride back to Texas in June after the NAPCP retreat. Nearly two months had passed and I was still feeling at a loss.  She and I started brainstorming – starting with things I love. What type of photography makes me most excited. Something fun about myself. Slowly, everything began to come together. I love urban photography – I love architecture and grungy old buildings. I am a freak when it comes to the color grey; nearly everything in my closet is a shade of that color.  We tossed around variations and that night, sitting as we waited for our table at the Gristmill, I looked up www.urbangrey.com to see if the domain was available.

It was.

Over the next few days I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I obsessed over it.  I was excited for it. I could imagine what I wanted the blog to feel like.  With all of the other names, I’d never before been able to come up with a plan or vision.  I sprung out of bed one morning long before Dustyn woke up.  I purchased the domain name and contacted Lauren Gaige at Restored 316 Designs about the new project. She did my previous logo and working with her had been so seamless, I knew that I had to have her on board for this project as well.  For over a month, she and I have been agonizing over every little detail for Urban Grey. She’s done a fabulous job on everything and has really pieced together my vision well.

Everything is not quite complete on Urban Grey. I have taken all of the wedding and engagement posts from Magan’s Lens and imported them into Urban Grey. I have not been able to change all the logos on the photos, nor have I been able to fix all the links that show up in each post. I wanted every detail to be perfect before announcing it, but I realized that the longer I waited, the more work I was piling on to my plate if things kept getting posted on this blog.

Here are a few things I’d like to point out:

• New wedding and engagement posts will be on Urban Grey. I will no longer be adding new ones to this blog.
• Remember to subscribe to Urban Grey if you liked receiving the posts in your inbox or Google Reader.
• All current wedding and engagement posts will remain on Magan’s Lens until December 31, 2010. After that I will remove them and make this site an environment only for newborns, families, and children.
• Any wedding information regarding FAQs, pricing, and announcements will be made at Urban Grey. While I am keeping up the wedding info on the menu above, I will not be updating it. Anything at Urban Grey will trump what I leave behind at Magan’s Lens.

I am so very, very excited about this new transition. I hope you’re excited too and that you’ll excuse the messiness of it as it all gets worked out. Here’s a glimpse at Urban Grey. Go to the website and take a peek!