It Seems My Name Isn’t So Unique

I’ve been fortunate that my name’s not John Smith or John Doe. The last name of Harrington is, relatively speaking, unique. I have friends that are Chris Anderson, Chris Morris, Patrick Johnson, and there’s more than one of them that are professional photographers. Heck, even Kevin Gilbert, of Bluepixel fame has someone – also in Maryland no less – that is a photographer named Kevin Gilbert (atleast this guy uses Kevin T. Gilbert though). A friend of mine wrote to ask me if I was now working for Pictage – a photo lab service based in California. I’m familiar with them, as I use their services. Here’s the e-mail that was sent:

From: jharrington@pictage.com
Date: August XX, 2007 X:XX:XX AM EDT
To: XXXXXX@XXXXXX.com
Subject: Pictage Album Survey

Dear XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX,

I would greatly appreciate it if you would take a moment to complete this survey about albums. It will take about 10 minutes to complete. Your responses are invaluable and will be taken into account as we focus on improving the Pictage experience.

Here is a link to the survey:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=XXXXXXXXXXXX

Thank you very much for your time.

John Harrington
Director of Product Management
Pictage, Inc.

Yikes! No! I like Pictage, but I’m not working there! So, if you get an e-mail from Mr. Harrington, know that it’s not this John Harrington – the one that’s based in DC, is a full time photographer, who wrote a book, and who pens this blog. Oh, and my middle initial is “H”, but I rarely use it.

Whew! I hope that gets it straightend out!

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Originally published on Photo Business News & Forum on August 21, 2007. Comments are closed; this post is part of the archive.

4 thoughts on “It Seems My Name Isn’t So Unique”

You should begin identifying yourself as John H. Harrington, III. It’s regal — and unique! 🙂

I’ve been struggling with this issue lately. My name, Chris Norris, is pretty common. After some work, I’ve gotten my website to #5 on Google and #1 on Yahoo. That’s still not quite good enough, as there are at least two other photographers named “Chris Norris”, one of whom has chrisnorris.com and is #1 on Google.

So what do I do? I could go by my full name, Christopher James Norris (domain name already registered). I could use a pseudonym. I also wonder how much I should try to separate my commercial work from my artwork.

Fascinating “it’s a small world” post… I too have had a similar issue… even though my name is not all that common – Jason Watson. Imagine the shock when I found another Jason Watson selling RF micro stock — yikes! I’ve used my middle initial – Jason O. Watson — for many years, and that seems to help sort out the confusion. 🙂

John,

You’re not related to Sir John Harrington, the inventor of the first flushing toilet, are you? 😉

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