I've been dabbling in photography since March and I've been doing weddings, maternity and family sessions as well as business card photos for people all summer so I could gain experience. I'm looking into getting my business license and perhaps starting to photograph part time to have an extra income. My problem is...I can't decide on a logo or watermark. The one I've been using is relatively simple that I threw together in photoshop in a matter of minutes and I've put it below. I've been thinking of getting something more professional from Etsy but a lot of the ones I'm drawn to have cutesy fonts and images that go with them. I like them but I'm not sure of how it would be perceived by the general public. My thought is people would trust me more with a serious logo but I think the cutesy ones can be more relatable sometimes. What's your thought on this?

The words are hard to read.  I understand you're probably going for a whimsical look, but you should make the text stand out more.

If graphic design is not your strong point, leave it to someone that does this professionally.  I've designed hundreds of logos over the years but I have a partial degree in Illustration & Graphic Design.

Your "logo" is not your business, yet, it needs to be strong and remarkable. That design above is neither.  I don't want you to feel bad but recognize that you might hurt your business more than help it if you don't know how to do a good logo.

Next, don't get so wrapped up in settling on the logo. Honestly, the only reason I'm locked into mine is because it's been the face of my company for 16 years and has been published thousands of times. I guarantee you that you could change your logo three times in the next two years and no one will hardly notice. I say that because I have several friends that changed theirs and no one noticed. You have to be really really well known before people start to associate you with it.

The logo above has several issues asside from the font. The background should never be a part of your logo - your logo CAN have some flourish element to it but I strongly suggest you start with just a font/lettering logo that has NO flourish. If a logo needs a flourish, it's not strong enough to begin with and no amount of clip art or flowers are going to help it.

The logo above is also not kerned and you may need to customize ANY font with your particular name or arrangement of letters. The computer doesn't know any better and the spacing is very odd above. Also consider using two fonts - one for your name and one for photography.  Very seldom does a font work for both or if it does, consider using all caps for photography or making it smaller in size.  But that "h" and other letters with flourishing beaks (tops or ends of letters) are really not working well together. This is part of the typographers' challenge when working with individual names and groups of letters. Overall this font has too many of these characters to work with your name.

There are some interesting online sources for logo design. Sometimes I've seen some goodish work and other times, the work was downright ridiculous.  Here is one that a friend used:http://99designs.com/

Again, let me stress that as a guideline, you can incorporate a flourish or graphic element into your logo but it must (should, strong should?) be integrated into the logo and not simply placed behind it or around it. If it's an integral part of the desgin, it's so much more effective and cool. Oh, and avoid using a camera at all costs...getting pretty cliche.