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This is our shortest blog post. It’s only 63 words. It might not be great for SEO, and it doesn’t show off our photos. It may not solve the world’s problems and there isn’t a whole lot to it. Its purpose is just to simply say hi and that life is good. So, Hi! Life Is Good. That is all.
Love,
Doug and Ally
“Hey it’s Helene!” is what we said when she showed up with her mom and little sister to talk about booking a senior photo session with us. We have known her since she was little, and anytime we photograph a senior we have known since she was little it’s a surreal day for us… Helene isn’t supposed to be this beautiful high school senior yet. Time is certainly flying by and maybe we are getting old! But this isn’t about us – it’s about Helene! And what a sweetheart and what a session! Let’s start in the studio with a black and blowy shot – Helene looks fantastic here!
Next we headed out on location and we had a perfect day! Not too hot or humid and great lighting.
Here is a behind the scenes vine with a couple highlights of the day – you can see where we did the black and blowy…
We're loving this senior session with Helene Deutch! Adorbs! @hdeutch
…and this next shot!
Helene has a very fun and easy going way about her which made her a pleasure to photograph, and she looked beautiful – here is where we’ll give a little shout out to the team of Selda on hair and Gloria on makeup at The Beauty Lounge down the hall from the studio here in the Orchard Mall.
Now back to the photos…
Love the close up with the tree – just lots of green and lots of color all around – the next shot of the waterfall is the giveaway that we were in Birmingham. Beautiful spots to photograph and this next one is the one we will end on for now…
SO pretty! We had a great time photographing Helene and being a part of this time in her life. We hope you enjoyed the results!
Sara in the city was a big hit! Senior season is in full gear and we are photographing the class of 2015 pretty much non stop at this point. We will have plenty more of these posts coming up as we are able to churn them out, and we are thrilled to bring you photos from this fantastic city session with Sara! But before we go out to light up the night let’s start back at the beginning of the session with an adorable studio shot!
Sara’s mom Kelly was inspired by two different photos on the wall of our studio – one of a little girl looking over her shoulder and another of a one year old holding a massive lollipop – she came up with the idea of combining the two and Sara pulled it off for a memorable and adorable look!
After a little more studio work we hit Birmingham for some nighttime fun, and once the sun went down we broke out our location lighting (off-camera light box, Westcott Ice Light) and Sara really turned it on. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s tour bus was parked outside the Townsend Hotel so we used it. Pretty cool huh?
Here is a little behind the scenes vine of the evening:
"This is my fave!" Awesome senior session with sara keebler! @sarakeeblerr Love!!!
Sara’s friend came along for the shoot as well (you can hear her enthusiatically commenting in the vine!) so Sara was traveling with an entourage and attracting a crowd everywhere we went! We moved to the sidewalk across from the Birmingham Theater marquee and got this fun photo…
Lastly we took advantage of the way the fountain in the center of the park is lit up at night for this stunner of an image! LOVE this:
What a night huh? We enjoyed every minute with Sara in the city and we hope you enjoyed the photos!
One year olds love… veggie sticks??? More on that in a minute…
Yes we had two of our favorite brothers back again for younger brother’s one year old photos and older brother’s four year old photos, and we planned a cake smash as we often do to celebrate and capture a first birthday. Meanwhile we have been photographing these guys since before the older brother was born with maternity photos when he was in utero! We are always excited to have them back – their sessions are usually memorable for various reasons and this adventure was no exception!
Our one year old was pretty set on hanging out with his mommy and didn’t really want to be sitting for pictures on his own at first, so we needed to take the extreme measure of “sending her away” – haha. She took big brother with her down the hall to Toyology while Daddy and we tried to distract the birthday boy and maybe get him to focus on something other than mommy. That worked! Tricks of the trade ya know…
Then it was time for the cake smash which all one year olds love right? Uh…. right? Well, maybe not! Everyone tried to get him to indulge and he just wasn’t having it. He opted for the veggie sticks! Smart kid! You can never have enough vegetables in your diet right? Maybe he’ll be a doctor or a nutritionist or a chef! We even tried putting the veggie sticks in the cake! Meanwhile big brother wasn’t going to let a perfectly good cake go to waste, so he dug in! This made for a lot of laughs as you can imagine.
Here is a fun vine with some highlights of the session.
#CakeSmash gone awry? B-day boy not so interested but big brother is! Lol!!!
All in all as I said it was another memorable session with these boys and we wouldn’t have had it any other way. 🙂
Alesha leads the way for the class of 2015 with these photos from her spectacular senior session! You already saw 14 members of this class as spokesmodels and those are “our” sessions where we test out new ideas. We wrapped those up and now going forward the class of 2015 sessions belong to the seniors!
As for Alesha we have become very big fans of this girl in a very short time and we were very excited to photograph her. We were itching to get going with our new seniors and we already had one rain out so we were not happy when we woke up to pouring rain and even some thunder on the morning of her scheduled photo shoot. We had our eyes on the hourly forecast and it stayed pretty true to the prediction of better weather in the afternoon so we kept the appointment and crossed our fingers…
We started in the studio with our black background:
Next we moved over to the white, but with a blue gel. Using colored gels over our lights allows us to manipulate the color a bit which gives us a cool look. Alesha looks great in the red against the blue! This would probably be a good time to give a shout out to Gloria at The Beauty Lounge for the makeup with this close-up!
At this point we were ready to head outside and as luck would have it “outside” was ready for us! The weather cleared up and we had a perfect afternoon! Here is a fun little vine with a couple highlights of the day:
The weather cleared just for Alesha Kotian! Loving this session & loving this senior! ❤️ https://t.co/80IW9QBSpB
— Frameable Faces (@FrameableFaces) July 8, 2014
Love love love these next two photos – the lighting and all the green in this one is amazing! Alesha has a natural and easy smile and this photo just works.
Alesha was a trooper – it’s a little yucky where she got in the water and she stood there and waited for one very large cloud to pass so we could get the lighting we wanted! We took a series of photos here and here is one we like that has a bit of a unique look in black and white.
We enjoyed our time with Alesha and we are so glad to know her! We hope you enjoyed these photos!
Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is an incredible place, and if you haven’t been there I highly recommend making the trip. We are huge fans of our National Parks and this one is only a little more than 4 hours from West Bloomfield, Michigan where we live depending on traffic.
We were able to get away for the holiday weekend with our kids and we went “Up North” which is where many Metro Detroiters go during the summer to relax. “Up North” is not necessarily the Upper Peninsula – it’s just a few hours north of Detroit where things are generally beautiful and relaxing. We hung out on Higgins Lake, hit the National Cherry Festival in Traverse City and then headed over to Sleeping Bear Dunes for our last full day up there. Ally doesn’t do a ton of landscape photography, but she brought her camera along for the trip. It was well worth it. She was able to capture some really nice photos and we are excited to share them here! Not everything that is “Frameable” has to be a face… ha!
These photos were taken along points of the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive within the park. We did the Dune Climb before we drove the scenic route and we weren’t really prepared with a proper backpack to take the camera up the climb. The climb is just pure fun (and tough) especially when you turn around and bound back down the sand. As for the scenic drive a few of the overlooks are simply majestic looking out over Lake Michigan.
This next shot is the only thing here I’m taking partial credit for – as I was walking along a path the moon caught my eye through this little gap in a dune and I called Ally over to stand right where I was standing to get the shot. The rest is all Ally and her amazing craft – her eye and her talent!
We hope you enjoyed these and they gave you just a taste of what this beautiful park has to offer!
A beautiful little girl on a warm summer day….and a cake SMASH is the best combination! We were thrilled to welcome this little princess back to the studio after she was here with her big brother as a flower pot for her six month milestone! Maybe you remember the post about the Dapper Dude and Baby Blossom? This time around we celebrated her birthday in style! We had a solid two hour window in the morning before her nap and we headed out to one of our favorite locations to get some pretty outdoor shots. It took her a minute to decide whether she felt like taking pictures on this day but once she made up her mind she really was a superstar…
Her mom and grandma came along and we all enjoyed ourselves. They had her dressed in the most beautiful outfits! There were plenty of birds singing, several people and a doggy came by to say hello – just a perfect summer day.
There is a lot to work with at this location including this bridge that we really love…
Here is a little behind the scenes vine of the action – our apologies for the little blur in the middle – not sure what my iPhone was thinking for a second there, but this will give you an idea of how the session went and you will see where the real fun started…
One our fave babies and one of our fave sessions!!! SO cute! ☀️
Yep – with a first birthday cake SMASH! What a hilarious mess! These always crack us up and this one was truly a riot. I think she enjoyed herself – what do you think?
All in all a great time and we have had a ball watching this little one grow! We hope you have enjoyed it too!
Such a cute smiley shmushy boy was here with his parents recently! That’s really the only way I can describe him. Okay I guess you could use sweet and squishy too – any way you put it he was awesome and his parents were really nice too. We had a lot of fun – lots of laughing and lots of Spanish too! Ally just wanted to eat him right up.
See what I mean? Love this kid! You can really get a feel for someone’s personality even at this young of an age – he is just a good natured smiley happy little boy, and why shouldn’t he be? That’s how his parents are. Peek-a-boo games are fun with the little ones to get them going sometimes and this session was no different with calls of “Donde esta Leo?” from his mom! If you follow this blog you know I often like to include behind the scenes vines from the session. This session was notable for producing one of my all time favorites! Leo was totally in motion while his mom was holding him, and then it was like the little man was completely entranced when he saw that he was on camera – look:
The hypnotic power of an #iPhone… LOL
Ah the “hypnotic power of an iPhone” indeed! That clip cracks me up every time I look at it…
Meanwhile here is a great shot of the happy family of three all together…
We also got pictures with mom and dad separately – really sweet. First a little boy and his mommy:
And then the proud dad with his son:
We hope you enjoyed the sneak peeks from this session! We always enjoy such a cute smiley shmushy boy like Leo!
Siblings bubbles and flowers can’t possibly be anything but pure wonderful right? Right! You may remember a post from back in December where we presented a family that was growing “right before our eyes” with maternity photos followed by the beautiful new little baby with her family? Well they are back and a lot can happen in 6 months… 🙂
Yes indeed babies bloom! We love our little 6 month flower pot babies. This little one was one of the easiest newborns to photograph we ever had and she was a joy again this time around! Six months is a great milestone and we especially love it when the six month old brings an older sibling back with her! Big brother did such an awesome job in this session! Mom and Dad were not sure he would be totally into sitting in the right spot and posing for the pictures together with his sister but he totally rocked it. It did not hurt that this little guy has an affinity for bubbles, and the parents were prepared. Take a look at this little behind the scenes vine of the fun and check out her face while you do! Priceless.
It's a good day when you have siblings bubbles and flowers!
Here is little man’s own turn in the spotlight…
Style to burn right? What a stud. To say this was a fun session would be a huge understatement. Here is an adorable shot of the two of them together – love the purple on purple and especially the expressions!
And finally let’s close it out for now with the beautiful little princess!
How cute is she? We are already planning her one year cake smash at the end of the year and we cannot wait to see this family again! We will be sure to share some of those photos so stay tuned!
It seems that you should care about Google Plus and now the new “Google My Business” after all, especially if you are a small business owner.
Google’s social media network (they prefer to call it a “layer”) has been around since June of 2011. Google Plus is not as popular as Facebook but it’s still Google and it’s not going anywhere. Does this mean you have to participate and get immersed in yet another social media platform? Not quite.
However, here is where you should pay attention. A while back I “claimed” Frameable Faces on Google. I just went on Google and verified that I am an owner so I could fill in the information that is there about our business. That is an important step because Google is obviously the most popular way to search the Internet. Regardless of how much or how little you bother with search engine optimization or social media, people are using Google to find you and they will continue to do so.
What I didn’t know is that at some point by claiming my “place” (my business) on Google, that prompted Google to create a verified Google Plus Page for Frameable Faces – I had no idea it existed. Kind of like a Facebook Business Page that they were calling “Google Places For Business” and now they have announced they have changed the name to “Google My Business”. If you’re a little confused it’s okay – Google has done a good job of confusing the marketplace with how they’ve rolled out their products.
The good news is that the new “Google My Business” does represent an opportunity. One thing I noticed when I went to the Frameable Faces page they created is that Google had been collecting data for me all along. It told me how many people had viewed the page (presumably from Google search results), how many people had asked for driving directions to the studio and where they asked for them from, what key words they used to find my listing – lots of good data!
Are you going to lose business by not using Google My Business? I can’t say that for a fact, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to ignore it. From just what I see locally very few brands know about this so don’t feel like you’ve missed the boat so far. The question is are you going to use this to your advantage going forward?
Here are a few benefits to setting up your page in my mind:
Don’t just take my word for it, check out this article about the benefits of this new tool. Listen, I am not predicting that Google Plus will become a pervasively popular social media site with the masses like Facebook. It is definitely growing now but it might not ever reach that tipping point where “everyone” is on it….and then again it might. Either way we already know the search engine is dominant, so at least set up your brand properly for now with Google My Business.
