Those of you who have been on location with us have very likely met Reflecto. He’s our sometimes rogue, somewhat snarky, and quite often arrogant reflector. He is really a character and while sometimes he gets a little out of line he’s definitely never boring, so we thought we would sit down for an interview with Reflecto and find out what’s on his mind….

FF: Let’s get right to it – it’s been said that you are a sometimes-rogue, somewhat snarky, and even arrogant reflector. Is that fair?

Reflecto: Listen, haters are gonna hate, so let ’em is what I say. It’s pretty simple. If I am awesome and I say so does that make me the bad guy for speaking the truth?

FF: Okay….. Uh – we won’t try to answer that question. How about you tell us about your childhood?

Reflecto: I try not to talk about my past too much. My family moved around a lot and had various jobs – wrapping York peppermint patties, getting odd jobs as foil – stuff like that. I decided when I was old enough that I would never settle and I was able to snag this gig with Frameable Faces. Now I run the place! Haha! Follow me on twitter at @reflect_o! Winning! I’m the be-

FF: Hey easy – let’s stay on topic okay?

Reflecto: Whatever – fine.

FF: What was your best moment on a photo shoot?

Reflecto: When you are supremely talented like me there are just too many to choose from. I enjoyed smacking Doug in the face on a shoot once. It was quite genius really – I waited for a really windy day and then “bam”! I really think he just thought it was the wind that caused it. Hahaha!

FF: You must have other moments that don’t involve violence…

Reflecto: Okay I’ll admit that I do get some satisfaction when my beautiful reflecting makes a senior look great. It definitely validates how great I am, and if the #frameables (yes I’ll appease Doug and Ally and call them that) are happy as a result then that’s a bonus.

FF: Who is Blocko?

Reflecto: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

(side note – “Blocko” is Reflecto’s alter ego and he’s nicer than Reflecto – we’re not sure why he didn’t want to talk about it)

FF: We know that sometimes you try to blind the frameables by reflecting the sun into their eyes. Do you think they deserve that?

Reflecto: The media embellished that story. My talent can be “blinding” – whoever made that comment meant it figuratively not literally. Like Michael Jackson told Paul McCartney I’m a lover not a fighter.

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Frameable Faces Photography
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Frameable Faces Photography is a small biz retail mom & pop shop of Doug&Ally Cohen located in the Orchard Mall in West Bloomfield, Michigan, United States Of America!
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Frameable Flashbacks! – Hannah

November 21, 2012

by Doug Cohen

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Have we mentioned we love our high school seniors? It lights up our day when they come back to visit and as I’m writing this it’s the day before Thanksgiving which means many of our past seniors are home from college! Current Michigan State student and former spokesmodel (not to mention North Farmington Raider alum) Hannah Iwrey spent the morning here with us yesterday and I snapped a droid photo of her and Ally before she left.

Ally and Hannah during yesterday's visit! (Photo taken with a Droid)

Affectionately known here as “HBM” (for Hannah Banana Montana), she has become like a member of the family. Normally I would Instagram a pic like this, but alas Hannah has a BlackBerry and there is no Instagram BlackBerry app so she isn’t on Instagram. I thought about posting it to Twitter, but it seemed an even better idea might be to write a blog post about the visit and so the idea for “Frameable Flashbacks” was born. Kind of a “where are they now” feature as we remember the great photo sessions and great times we had and check in with our seniors to see what exciting things they are up to.

We gave her three questions to answer for us after she left and here they are! Enjoy, and when you’re done enjoy the 2 “iconic” images from her senior session back in 2010 at the bottom of the page!

Frameable Faces: So what are you up to?

Hannah: As much as I know you’re cringing about this topic, I go to Michigan State and am currently studying to be a Professional Writer. I’m in my second year and much to any other Spartan’s dismay, I’m still 100% a Wolverine fan! I spend a lot of my time working on a short story that’s already 15 pages long, and another collection of stories based on my experiences in the summer camping world. When I’m not up at school, I’m more than likely sitting in the FF Studio with my BFF Reflecto and hating on Doug for his hats, or being made fun of for the way I pronounce certain words. Sarry aboot that, eh.

Frameable Faces: What are your future plans with your studies (what do you want to be when you grow up)?

Hannah: Like I said, I’ve been eagerly working on those two writing projects, and plan to further develop some other unfinished pieces for my writing portfolio. My dream plan for the future would be writing children’s books or young adult novels. If that fails, I think I may have a promising future as a Sassmaster. I mean, I already have so many pairs of Sassy pants…

Frameable Faces: What do you remember most about your Frameable Faces experience?

Hannah: I really don’t know how you can ask someone to pin-point just ONE great thing about being a part of the Frameable Faces Family! Wow look at me and my alliteration, maybe this whole writing thing will work out. I love the energy that both Ally and Doug bring to sessions. I was super nervous to shoot my spokesmodel session during my junior year, but once the awesome music started from Doug’s endless library and Ally snapped the camera, it all fell into place. I also really loved going on location to some awesome places in the area, truly unforgettable. But I’d have to say my ultimate favorite aspect of FF is how welcoming the studio always feels when I drop by for a visit, I’m proud to have earned a nickname!

West Bloomfield Photographer, Frameable Faces Photography, Fine Art Photography

Fashion and Style With Eleganza Boutique and The Beauty Lounge!

November 17, 2012

by Doug Cohen

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It was definitely “Haute” in the studio yesterday as we collaborated with the girls from Eleganza Boutique for images that will appear in their new catalogue! Eleganza is a neighbor of ours down the hall here in the Orchard Mall. They’ve been in business since 1986 and it is a fabulous LOCAL independent boutique. Eleganza provided the fashions and the models while hair and makeup was provided by The Beauty Lounge – a fantastic salon also here in the mall!

West Bloomfield Photographer, Frameable Faces Photography, Metro Detroit Photographer We were very excited to work with them yesterday and the results speak for themselves – so sexy and glamorous! Everyone should tap into their inner supermodel at least once, and while J and M have modeled before, J for example wowed herself with how great she looked in front of Ally’s camera! These images represent our typical “haute” session style which we have posted before. We’ve even included a little video of J working it! Enjoy! But you might need a fan to cool yourself down….. these pics are “haute Haute HAUTE!!!”

West Bloomfield Photographer, Frameable Faces Photography, Glamour Photography

Check Out The Hook While My DJ Revolves It… and Check Out This Fun Family Session!

November 11, 2012

by Doug Cohen

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Ice Ice Baby…. Ice Ice Baby…. All right STOP! Collaborate and listen. Ice is back with my brand new invention. Something grabs a hold of me tightly. Flow like a harpoon daily and nightly. Will it ever stop? Yo – I DON”T KNOW!!!!!!

But that song has been going through our heads here at the studio since our photo session with the G family. 🙂
West Bloomfield Photographer, Frameable Faces Photography, Metro Detroit Photographer
When M, S and their sons walked through the door, we knew we were going to have a phenomenal session. And fantastic it was! N wowed Ally with his awesome sauce and his fun sweet hilarious personality, while M was a total ham rapping the little ditty mentioned above all the way through! The kid has skills! Jumping, laughing, general silliness….we had it all during their session. And isn’t that what it’s all about? Having fun, creating memories and the images that capture them AS THEY’RE HAPPENING!
West Bloomfield Photographer, Metro Detroit Photographer, Frameable Faces Photography
Thanks for a rockin’ great time, G’s! Word to your mother……

West Bloomfield Photographer, Family Pictures, Metro Detroit Photographer

Facebook First Aid For Brands – How To Survive The New Changes

November 7, 2012

by Doug Cohen

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I wrote a guest post back in May for The Collective where I echoed the predominant thinking about how your blog (and website) should be the center of your online universe since you own them, as opposed to your pages on Facebook and Twitter that you don’t own. You don’t know what might happen with those sites and you can’t control it. Well something indeed happened to Facebook…

Money changes everything.

The short version is Facebook went public, it didn’t go well, and now they are scrambling to make more money – fast. They have Wall Street investors to answer to now and everything has changed. I get it – they are a business. The problem is how they went about this. Now stay with me here… They encouraged brands to build a following by engaging with their fans, and then once the brands acquired the fans Facebook took away the ability to reach the fans unless the brand pays to “promote” posts to the fans who were already following the posts. A major bait and switch.

The dilemma…

Keep in mind that our philosophy at Frameable Faces like many others has been to grow our likes and our reach on Facebook in a totally organic way – steadily building relationships fan by fan without contests and cheesy promotions. This suddenly has become more difficult and it raises a two part dilemma:

I’m not in love with the idea of my peeps seeing my posts because I paid for them to see them. I want them to see our content because they like it and the posts are worthy of being seen. Facebook used to ensure your posts would show up in the news feed of people who regularly interacted with your brand. Your reach was largely a result of successful engaging posts. Not sure if that’s happening at all anymore…
Even though we’ve had some success with diversifying on sites like Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and Twitter to name a few, we haven’t been able to ween ourselves completely from Facebook for reaching our peeps or driving traffic to this blog for example.

So what next? First what NOT to do…

I read a great article by Ken Mueller on 10/22 that stated in part to “stop trying to game Facebook’s Edgerank” – in other words don’t try to cheat the system because shortcuts are not the answer. People are trying to find ways to do this like moving brand content to their personal pages for example. While I have used my personal page to promote our studio from time to time I’ve done it in a very limited fashion, and with a couple exceptions it’s usually when I’ve written a blog post that is more universal like tips on social media that I know everyone can use. If you start doubling up your content on both your business and personal pages your message can start to get lost. Think of it as making a social call on your personal friends to market your studio to them – this isn’t the exact same thing but it’s similar – in real life it’s a little awkward, in online life it’s a little spammy. The people who subscribe to our page (personal friends or not) subscribe there to follow our studio, the people who friend me want to be my friend – not necessarily my prospect.

So What Next? What TO Do…

The best bet seems to stay the course and focus on creating great content, and make sure all your eggs are never in one basket – especially a basket you don’t own like Facebook. However Facebook isn’t going anywhere and it’s critical to be able to adapt to these changes. One way to adapt unfortunately is to yes, spend a little money to promote a post here or there to make sure you continue to reach your audience. Which leads me to the following tip.

A Specific Tip I Learned From Trial and Error

I paid my first 5 dollars to sponsor a status update to see what kind of result I would get. The number of people it reached was a little disappointing, but here’s the tip – this was a post that no one commented on or liked (pretty pathetic I know). But misfires happen once in a while to the best of us, and these posts are NOT the ones you want to promote. Afterwards I came across an article by Jay Baer about when to sponsor posts and one of the things he mentioned was to only promote a post if after waiting 6 hours it’s exceeded a 1% engagement rate. Then give it a boost. Don’t try to boost a dog that no one is responding to in the first place. Promote a status update that is already proving to be engagement worthy.

Hope this helps! Please comment with any feedback or helpful tips on this topic!

Frameable Faces and Politics? They Don’t Mix and Probably Shouldn’t For Your Business…

November 1, 2012

by Doug Cohen

5 Comments

Frameable Faces and Politics In this election season politics dominate our airwaves as well as our social media feeds. In my view it’s generally not a good idea for a business to share their political opinions. We’ve seen many examples of businesses doing this and the controversy that follows. Chick-fil-A is a recent high profile example that comes to mind and I also found an interesting article that examines the politics of retailers and the potential impact on their brands.

Frameable Faces and Politics?

If anyone is curious who I’m voting for and why I suppose you could call me privately and I might be willing to discuss my views. While I have definite opinions I will not be making any public statements of support nor any attacks on either President Obama or Governor Romney. I believe Frameable Faces is a place where people should come to celebrate. If we have success as a studio it is going to be because of the relationships we build and the faces we capture with photography – it’s certainly not going to be based on our politics. This should be a place for #frameables of any color, creed, orientation or affiliation. I can’t stand the partisanship and the politics as they are happening, but I still love our system overall. It’s flawed to be sure but in the photography business we spend a lot of time studying faces, and just as human imperfections are part of what make people lovable and unique the same can be said for our system of government. At the end of the day one candidate will win and one will lose based on who we (the people) say. It’s America and I love it. The loser will concede and we’ll move on. There will likely be no military coup or revolution.

Keep the election in perspective

So here is my political statement – it’s actually a history lesson… I am a huge student of American history and for those of you who don’t know much about the history of our politics, if you think the partisanship and the ugly side of recent elections are getting worse and it makes you feel the country is going in a bad direction I have news for you – this is NOTHING. Picture Joe Biden and Paul Ryan challenging each other to a fight – or a duel with pistols for example – don’t forget something like that actually happened. The man on your 10 dollar bill? That’s Alexander Hamilton, a founding father who was killed in a duel by former Vice President Aaron Burr just across the river from Manhattan. The whole decade of the 1790’s was fueled by bitter rivalries within the government and intense partisanship between the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans. Washington felt Jefferson betrayed him. Adams and Jefferson went from friends to enemies (they reconciled in their later years). The elections of 1824 and 1828 between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson were so explosive they are almost hard to believe… Lincoln’s election in 1860 was a catalyst for an awful war between North and South. A deal was made to put Rutherford B. Hayes in office after the 1880 election after messy and confusing results. The 1912 election saw Teddy Roosevelt turn on his dear friend William Howard Taft, storm out of the Republican convention, form his own party and hold his own convention which essentially had the effect of handing the presidency to Woodrow Wilson. Partisan politics and negative campaigning is certainly nothing new.

Life will go on

My message is for everyone to keep a little perspective going into this election, and while I understand having strong feelings about your convictions I don’t think it is wise to mix your business with your politics. I’ll vote how I’ll vote and I’m not going to fan the flames of anger by using the platform of our business and this blog to try to impose my views on others. Regardless of the results of the election the sun will still rise on Wednesday morning. Republican and Democratic officials will still be working together to help the victims of superstorm Sandy on the East coast. I’ll wake up and have breakfast with my kids and get them to school, and Ally and I will open up the studio of our dreams and take more pictures. And, as all Americans should, I’ll wish the best to our president regardless of which man wins the election.

Class of 2013 Frameables! Part 2

October 25, 2012

by Doug Cohen

2 Comments

Back in September we posted some Class of 2013 Frameables and promised that there would be more to come, so as promised here is Part 2!!! What a great year this has been and the fall colors of Michigan have been beautiful! We have enjoyed each senior who has come through our doors – more great sessions, great stories, great friendships being built. Our sometimes-rogue reflector “Reflecto” has even been moved to start tweeting largely because of the fun he’s had on the senior sessions (although he probably won’t admit it).

Meanwhile, we hope you enjoy this new round of photos of these inspiring young Frameables!

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Frameable Faces For Seniors! “Behind the Scenes” – Picking Up Proofs

October 15, 2012

by Doug Cohen

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We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – we LOVE our seniors! Photographing seniors is one of the most enjoyable things we do. Ally and I both enjoyed high school and we attended North Farmington High School together. While we knew each other and I was only one class ahead of her, we did not date until after college (it’s actually a fun story). Because we went to high school together and only live a few minutes away from where we grew up we’ve always been able to relate to each other’s high school experience and it’s never really that far away. Maybe that’s why we enjoy high school photos so much!

We thought it would be helpful to give some details here about our process for taking senior pictures for those considering our studio, and we’ve included a fun behind-the-scenes video of a senior picking up her proofs. This can also give you some ideas for what you may want to look for in a studio for senior pictures if you don’t live in the Metro Detroit area. There are 5 main steps in our process of a senior photo session:

Consultation. We always meet ahead of time with our seniors and usually a parent so that we can get to know each other. We talk about the upcoming session and plan it out based on the senior’s vision for the pictures. We discuss style, location, clothing, colors, hair, makeup (for the girls), life, school, plans for after high school and whatever else is on their mind.
Photo session. 3 hours of anything goes – often starting with a yearbook headshot and then moving along to fire, water, trees, meadows, alleyways, buildings, pets, friends…. and almost every session has a story. From a small twister hitting the mall during a shoot to a cat hunting down a chipmunk right in front of us in a park, lots of crazy stuff can happen and often does! We have a ton of fun during our sessions – lots of laughs.
Sneak peeks. We usually post a couple images from the session on facebook (with a model release OF COURSE – be wary of photographers who will post your image for their commercial purposes without permission), sometimes a behind-the-scenes shot from the session on Instagram as well as the occasional tweet. We really enjoy seeing all the love that our seniors get from their friends with likes, favorites, comments and tweets online about the pictures from their session.
Proof pick up. This is always really exciting – lots of anticipation to see the images which depending on the season can be anywhere from 2 – 4 weeks after the session. Our seniors get a physical proof book which they get to keep and we present these to them with an in-person slide show set to music on the big screen in the studio. It’s a very special two minutes for everyone. This is the part of the process we have highlighted here in this video clip of a proof pick up!

The 5th and final step is simply to place the order – wallets for friends, wall portraits for the family room, prints for the grandparents, pictures for the office, coffee table books for the living room… Plenty of options!

All in all it’s one of the best parts of our “job” – and it certainly doesn’t feel like a job at all.

“Life Began” With Facebook And Today Is My 5th Birthday!

October 3, 2012

by Doug Cohen

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October 3rd, 2007. A glorious day – it was the day I came into the world………of facebook. That makes today my 5th birthday and I am celebrating with this blog post. Facebook wasn’t my first exposure to social media but it was the site that changed everything for sure. Taking a little trip down memory lane I was able to see the days I became friends with my best friends from my previous uninformed, boring, non-connected life. The early days of facebook were truly baby steps for me – I didn’t have much of a filter, I started status updates with verbs as if my profile name of “Doug Cohen” had to be the beginning of my sentence. I did that for over a year – like this pearl of wisdom from 11/25/08:

Groundbreaking huh?

Traveling right along, today I relived two of the best moments of my life. On 12/16/09 my daughter who was 10 at the time made the winning basket in overtime to win in the championship game of her basketball league. I’ll never forget that moment and how excited she was and on 6/16/11 my son who was 9 at the time got his first two hits of the little league season after struggling quite a bit up until that point. I’ll never forget the smile on his face that evening and afterwards he was awarded “player of the game”. I see a couple of anniversary wishes from Ally and I to each other here and there and many other milestones, images and memories along the way.

As for Frameable Faces, we had a couple “groups” for a while but when the business profiles/pages were released we moved over to that format and the main Frameable Faces page was born on March 12, 2010…..

……. and its younger sibling, the Frameable Faces for Seniors! page was born 4 days later on March 16:

We have used facebook to expand our reach and build relationships as a studio, and personally we have used it to share good times (and bad) with friends and family. We’ve shouted out for some shoveling help when we were snowed in and had someone show up at our door in 10 minutes. We’ve told jokes, argued, debated, learned and even watched the children of our friends grow up. We’ve made new friends and rekindled relationships with old ones. It’s been a remarkable 5 years. What about you? Take some time to look through your timeline and see what you find. When did life begin on facebook for you? Tell us in the comments below!

When You Fell Did You Get Back Up? Our Top 8 Wipeouts

September 28, 2012

by Doug Cohen

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This post really has nothing to do with photography, but there might be a life lesson in here somewhere by the time you are done laughing at us. I poke fun at Ally for being a clutz but I’ve had a few good spills myself over the years. So here we go with our top 8 wipeouts in no particular order (even though I saved the best for last – don’t cheat)….

Our Top 8 Wipeouts…

Doug vs. his shoelaces. This goes back to the summer of 1987 while playing high school football for North Farmington against Detroit Denby in a summer 7-on-7 tournament at Wayne State University. Summer 7-on-7 tournaments are non-contact – no pads and no tackling. I went across the middle for a pass and got hit hard by one of their linebackers. I got up and squared off with him and all eyes were on us. “What the H was that?” I yelled. “So maybe I tripped” he said. We stared each other down for a second – suburban kid vs. city kid, and then I turned to walk away…. and tripped on my shoelace and fell flat on my face.
Ally shows her graceful side on the honeymoon. Ally and I got married in 1996 and went first to Disney for 4 days and then on a week long cruise. We were dressed to the nines for the formal dinner when Ally pulled a spectacular faceplant just outside of the dining room in front of about 100 people. She survived and we laughed our butts off.
Doug decides not to be outdone on the honeymoon. I believe the story went something like this… We were on our way to the tender to take us to the island from the ship when I realized I forgot something at the room. I went back to get it while Ally waited only to find out I went the wrong way and ended up at the wrong end of the ship. Not wanting to miss the boat (literally) I sprinted down the hallway of the ship in flip flops which I can now tell you is dumb. My flip flop got caught and I went flying – I saved my fall by instinctively grabbing on to the rail and I sliced my right hand in the process. When I finally got back to Ally my hand was covered in blood. I still have a pretty nice scar from that one….
Ally vs. a Bosu ball. This happened in the summer of 2012. Three weeks before our daughter’s bat mitzvah Ally was working out and fell off of a bosu ball chipping a bone in her foot. Luckily she was able to get away with wearing a boot
Bosu ball

Bosu ballfor a couple weeks and she was good to go for the bat mitzvah. It wasn’t easy though – especially when we found ourselves deeper into a forest than we planned for a senior photo shoot and that hike was pretty tough on Ally in her boot with a still freshly broken ankle…. what a trooper!
Doug “leads” the team through the hoop. As I am fond of pointing out (with love of course) Ally has never “saved” a potential fall in her life. If she trips at all she’s on the ground. As with my own honeymoon wipeout this was another one I “saved” but it was no less embarrassing. For this one we go back to high school for our opening football game on September 5th (my 17th birthday)… It was at Southfield Lathrup and I was a captain of the team so I led the team out onto the field and through the big paper hoop the cheerleaders had made for us to bust through. However the girls didn’t notice that they were holding the hoop right over the edge of the paved high jump pit and I stepped right on the edge which sent me stumbling for about 7 steps through the hoop.
Doug gets a sack

I’m sure our opponents were very intimidated…. We still won though 17-7 and I even though I had an unfortunate fumble I did still have two sacks. Here’s a picture of one of the sacks (I’m #31 in white).
Ally on the sidewalk. Ally was strolling along one winter day in front of the student union while she was in college at Michigan State when she went down hard on her butt on a patch of ice as she was saying hello to someone on the sidewalk. Ally tried to play it off with her “cute little outfit on and cute little boots” as she tells it, but she was definitely a little embarrassed.
Doug on the driveway. Ice strikes again… I slipped on a patch of ice on the driveway maybe about 6 years ago or so. Legs went straight out and I landed hard on my butt – to the point where I was pretty sure I broke my tailbone. It was bad enough that I went to the doctor for x-rays but there was no break. I was sore for a couple days but no major injury.
“Mmmmmm Strawberries”. This is really the most epic of all of them. We were up North spending a weekend with friends at their house in Boyne City. We were hanging out on their dock on Lake Charlevoix when my buddy’s mom brought some fresh strawberries down. It was a beautiful day and Ally was enjoying a perfect moment with her strawberries when the back leg of her chair slipped off the edge of the dock sending her head over heels and crashing upside down into the water about 5 feet below. She survived that one without a scratch, but that was definitely one of the most intense moments of pure chaos I’ve witnessed. Absolutely gut-busting hilarious.

There you have it. The top 8 wipeouts. I kept it to 8 in order to keep it even – I could have mentioned Ally’s dive on her first senior session or her tumble into a couple bikes at spinning class, but that wouldn’t be fair. Hehe…

The point of course is that this post is a metaphor for life. We all fall from time to time. Life is not about whether you fall. You will. It’s about whether you get up, and hopefully you can laugh at yourself a little and enjoy the whole experience along the way. What was your best wipeout? Share it in the comments!