The sun sets on the old & rises on the new

At last I can share the big news… My family and I are moving back to the beautiful Bay area, California – coming January 2016! After the initial excitement subsided, it dawned on me that this is a very good time to rebrand my photography business. Great idea, but how do I execute that? How do you rebrand a business?

First up: The name either indicates the type of business and products or services you sell or it is thought provoking and attracts interest. I gave this a lot of thought and discussed it with so many people, but in the end I understood that the product I sell is myself. On sale to you is the experience of me taking awesome pictures of you. Yes, you get great images to hold, but it is my service that you’ll remember, for better or for worse. Now, I love my name. I also I know that it is a challenge to pronounce and even spell correctly. You can try in any language, Marele is a challenging name. This was actually the main reason for the first name of my business: mjphoto was simple and easy, But I have grown and I’ve made peace with my ‘hard-to-pronounce’ name. After going back and forth so many times, my business’ new name is… (drum roll)… Marele Strydom Photography.

Lucky for me, marelestrydom.com was very much available and I purchased my new domain. Great, now Marele Strydom Photography had a name and website. Next up was the logo, stationary, fonts and all things pretty for a brand. Into the frame steps Colleen from Lieflingkind. Colleen is extremely good at what she does and she created my corporate identity and I love my new logo, and clean look she created. Big Thank you to the team from Lovelab who updated my website!

To announce the rebranding I thought it would be great to do a shoot – sunset ending the old and a new start with the sunrise! I hope the sunset images shows the light, fun and fresh feeling I was going for. In a way this represents my preferred style up to now. Up again the next morning, at the crack of dawn! We celebrated the new with a rose gold bottle of champagne, crisp white cake and a more traditional wedding gown. A sense of romance and excitement filled the air. For weddings, I want to start including more of the romantic and editorial images. May these feelings come to life in what you’ll see below. A huge shout out and thank you to my lovely (and very patient) models! Santi who joined us at sunset and Annette from Annette Olwagen make-up & hair for getting up at 4am to be ready for the morning shoot.

A last word of thanks to my mother, Amori Joubert. ‘Florist and cake decorator.’ 😉 Amazing job mom!

Ladies and gentlemen, without further delay, here is… Marele Strydom, Wedding and Lifestyle Photography.

California Bay Area bookings can come on in 🙂 January 2016!!