Category Archives: family photography

This Family Is Definitely A Work Of Art!

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The family is the classic masterpiece isn’t it?  This family session was special for a few reasons.  For starters they don’t all live in the same city so when they get together it’s really nice for them, which in turn makes it really nice for us to be a part of.  The fact that they would choose to capture the occasion of being together here at our studio is really rewarding for us.  In addition, Larry and Ally have gotten to know each other through spinning class and Larry is just a great guy so when he decided to bring his wife Barbara and their kids here we got excited!  Ally teaches spinning classes a few times per week and Larry comes to the class and brings a lot of good energy so we knew this session would be fun!

A Work Of Art…

Let’s start with a couple of family portraits shall we?  The first one is a bit of a classic pose that really turned out nicely…

Work Of Art

Up next what would a family portrait session be at Frameable Faces without a family hug right?  We love the family hug!

Work Of Art

They really were enjoying being together that day and you can see it!

Now let’s take a look at a fun photo of the siblings…

Work of Art

…and one of the happy couple!

Work Of Art

Now before we share one last bonus photo let’s look at our fun behind the scenes vine of the session!

More Works Of Art!

So as you can see in the vine Larry wanted to celebrate Barbara’s art as well so we wanted to share one last photo of Barbara with her work!

Work Of Art

How cool right?  Not sure we’ve done a photo quite like that one – love it.

And so there it is – a family that is truly a work of art!  We hope you enjoyed the highlights from their session!

Two Little Rock Star Brothers (and their mommy)!

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Photographing brothers at four and two years old in theory can be an adventure, and these two rambunctious rock stars were anything but boring!  They were total hams and they had us cracking up.  Alternately having fun with each other, fighting, smiling, running, and touching stuff – so in other words basically they’re perfect.  Ha – you’ll see that in the end they totally rocked it and they are just gorgeous kids!

We went for the simple casual look with jeans and white t-shirts for the most part and their mom jumped in for a few really cute photos as well.

Let’s start with a couple individual shots of our rock star brothers – one in color of the two year old:

Rock Star BrothersAnd one of older brother in black and white…

Rock Star Brothers

How awesome are they?  They were dancing and rocking out to the “gummy bear song” and various versions of the gummy bear song for most of the session.  It was quite hilarious, and let’s look at the behind the scenes vine of our time together while we’re at it – love this:

Now we will take a look at one of our photos with mommy – there are a few of these from the session and we really like the story of this one.  Little guy looking around while mommy is loving on him and holding big brother while he focuses on the camera.  Everyone touching, everyone connected.

Rock Star Brothers

Love it.

Lastly let’s take a look at a shot of the two brothers together – brothers and friends!

Rock Star Brothers

So there it is – two little rock star brothers and their mommy.  We were so happy to have them here and we are thrilled to have them on our blog!  We hope you enjoyed the highlights from their session!

An Epic Session And Cake Smash With A One Year Old Superstar!

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We photographed this lovely couple years ago when they got engaged, and now they have added to the family with a precious and yummy little girl who they brought to the studio for some one year photos and a cake smash.  What a day – this little one was as close to perfect as a one year old can be for a session!  She was a total ham, worked the camera like a pro, and treated us to quite possibly the most epic cake smash in Frameable Faces history!!!  She had an audience as well with her grandparents there to watch, and she delivered – a true one year old superstar!

Let’s get to the photos shall we?  Let’s start with our featured model on her own!

One Year Old Superstar

How adorable is she???  Okay let’s get mommy and daddy into a shot and enjoy the happy family together:

One Year Old Superstar

Just a great shot of the three of them.  Now let’s get into a little more fun…  this is where our little princess started to really get going…

One Year Old Superstar

See what we mean?  How awesome is that outfit?  The hat, shirt and tutu – it all comes together for total cuteness.  Let’s take a little look at our behind the scenes vine of the session where you can really see how much fun our little one was having, and you’ll start to see the cake smash.

So as we mentioned, the cake smash was epic indeed.  She loved the cake and really didn’t need much prompting to get going on it.  She made a fantastic mess which is a lot of fun to watch.  Take a look!

One Year Old Superstar

So there you have it!  The one year old superstar with her epic cake smash!  So yummy and so fun – we hope you enjoyed these photos from our session with her!

A Family That Fits Together Like Pieces Of A Perfect Puzzle!

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We have been really fortunate to meet some really special families over the last few months, like several in a row that we’ve just connected with from the first minute we met them and this next family was no exception.  This is a case of a crew that have only been all together for several short years, and yet they clearly fit like pieces of a perfect puzzle and you would think they’ve been together forever – they all get along so well and just seem comfortable together!  Paige and Dean have awesome kids, and as it turned out Dean and I have some shared and unique connections that we discovered that night going back to Dean and my brothers’ college football days.

Meanwhile the oldest son was in town from college on break so this provided the occasion for some family photos while they were all together, and we planned the shoot for their house.  They liked the idea of focusing on black and white photos, and they turned out so well!  We actually shoot in color and then convert them to black and white afterwards, but it’s neat when you know you are shooting for black and white – it forces you to approach the photos in a slightly different way which is a lot of fun.  Let’s start with a nice family portrait of everyone together…

Perfect Puzzle

What a fine looking group!  Next let’s take a look at a couple different combos.  First Dean and his two guys:

Perfect Puzzle

Followed by Paige and her guy and gal!

Perfect Puzzle

Here is our little behind the scenes vine of the evening – gotta love the “brotherly love” – haha!

Now for one more and this is a unique one – shooting down at them from the upstairs landing.  We love the way this one turned out!

Perfect Puzzle

So there you have it – the family that fits together like a perfect puzzle!  When we were done they “made” us stay for dinner and we had a great time!  New friends!

Lots Of Fun Smiles and Love In The Room With This Family!

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There were lots of fun smiles and love in the room with this family that we are about to share photos of with you!  There were (double) family hugs, cute sisters riding on horsies, dancing and singing, laughter, casual shots, formal shots – just really a session that had everything.  What a great bunch!  A great couple with three grown children, a son-in-law and two beautiful granddaughters!

Krista (the mom of the three grown kids) decided on the brown backdrop for the photos and we love photographing on the brown.  We did a few family shots first including the family hug.  But this family hug was extra special because the two little ones added their OWN mini hug in front of the family hug….  a double family hug!  So cute!

Fun Smiles and LoveNext we broke the crew up into some groupings including the oldest daughter with hubby and the two granddaughters who gave us the mini hug above.  Here’s a shot of the four of them:

Fun smiles and love

At this point it was time for the little ones to completely take over the show!  They were so funny – and total pros both of them throughout the whole shoot.  They were perfectly behaved and they were cracking everyone up – you can take a look in this behind the scenes vine from the session!

Here is a great photo of the two of these cuties:

Fun smiles and love

Love it!  At this point we were done with all the fun casual photos and we got all the shots of the girls that we wanted, so Krista and Joe stayed behind and changed into something a little more formal for a portrait together.  A great couple who produced this great family!

Fun Smiles and Love

And there you have it!  You can see that there were lots of fun smiles and love in the room with this crew and we had a ball hanging out with them and photographing them all!

We Heart This Little Guy And His Parents!

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Ally is always fond of saying “I heart so and so” and this should be obvious but that means she loves them…  haha!  Well this is a case where we really “heart” this little guy – not only because we love him but we really did “heart” him!  You’ll see what we mean in a bit…  Meanwhile his parents are a delight and they just really fit in here – we totally clicked.

Baby Neil is only 4 months old and already he’s so smart, so alert, so smiley, and has such a nice and mellow disposition.  We got going with him with a handmade quilt that a friend made for them for starters that he was peeking out from – so cute!

We Heart This Little GuySee what we mean?  Smushy and smiley.  We love that shot!  Next we used a really nice green traditional Indian scarf for this photo.

We Heart This Little Guy

A little mid session snooze is always welcome!  At 4 months it’s nice if they happen to fall asleep because you can get some really cute sleeping baby poses and you can pose them how you like!  So while we were “hearting” the little man it was now time to “heart” him for real – with heart pillows and baby kisses all over him!

We Heart This Little Guy

Makes you smile right?  Let’s take a look at our little behind the scenes vine of the day where you’ll see some of the other fun we had including making him into a little human Tootsie Roll:

Lastly it was time to get the whole family into the act and one of the really pretty shots we captured was this one with bare shoulders – really nice.

We Heart This Little Guy

And that’s a wrap on this one for now!  We hope you “hearted” these shots as much as we did making them!

So Fun Getting Krazy with The Kamen Family!

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Getting Krazy with the Kamen family proved to be one of the most fun family sessions we have ever had here at Frameable Faces!  We love these guys.  You may recognize Courtney from her days as a high school senior spokesmodel for the class of 2014 if you follow our blog.  This time we had the whole fam here including their dog Shadow who was definitely the star of the shoot!  Haha!  This session had everything including jumping, family hugs, silly faces, Shadow “sitting on a throne” and various other shenanigans so let’s get to it…

For starters they chose to go with black clothes on the black background for colors which really looks cool.  Sometimes people wonder if that will work because they fear the clothing will blend into the background, but it looks great if you know how to light it properly.  The first shot is a classic hug between three siblings and a spouse.  Love it!

Getting Krazy

Next it was time to get Shadow involved and he’s quite a stud.  He holds an extremely important position and status within this family so it was critical to convey that in this next photo which is why we had him sitting on his throne for this one.  We think we captured the moment here…

Getting Krazy

Next we started to play around some and get some fun candid shots and that’s when the hilarious shenanigans started…  here’s a great one:

Getting Krazy

And here is our hilarious behind the scenes vine of the session…  so funny!

Lastly we’ll share this fun shot where Shadow jumped back in for another…  This was the photo we teased in our last year-end recap post.

Getting Krazy

So there you have it!  We had an absolute blast getting Krazy with the Kamen family!  We hope you enjoyed these highlights from their awesome session!

2014 Was A Wonderful and Frameable Year!

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2014 was a wonderful and “Frameable” year that we won’t soon forget and in many ways it was the best year yet for Frameable Faces!  As we charge into what should only be the best, happiest and healthiest 2015 possible for ALL of our peeps – we take a happy look back at the past year!

The Class of 2015 Spokesmodels

Okay so the fact that we assembled a new crew of spokesmodels wasn’t something unique to 2014 since we do that every year, but every class is indeed unique and this one was no exception!  A bigger class than usual, we really fell in love with this group and ended up with some great new friends out of it – not just friends of the studio but of our family.  We spent a good part of our winter and spring photographing these awesome seniors and I was playing with the panorama function on my iPhone camera the whole time.  Let’s reveal all of the behind-the-scenes panoramas from those sessions together here – these aren’t professional shots and they aren’t filtered or retouched but together they are kind of neat!

2014 201420142014201420142014201420142014201420142014That’s how we spent a good part of the first 4 months of the year, culminating with our spokesmodel party with our usual dinner (catered by Pine Lake Market) and Just Baked cupcakes and that’s where we create our composite which stays in the window of our studio until the next class!

2014

Summer – Relay For Life, more seniors, road trips…

Team Frameable Faces participated in the Relay For Life once again to try to help beat cancer and we had a fun and rewarding day raising a nice chunk of money this year.  We also continued photographing a whole bunch of seniors and we even took a couple of road trips including one where Ally took some breathtaking photos up at Sleeping Bear Dunes.  We worked hard this summer and at the same time had to plan and gear up for our son Tony’s Bar Mitzvah!  Our heads were spinning most of the time… but it was all good stuff.

Tony’s Bar Mitzvah!

What an awesome weekend this was!  Tony did a great job, the party was a blast, and our photographer – well she’s the best.  We hired our own event photographer Angela and it was really cool to be on the other side of the lens and in her capable and talented hands.  You can see a handful of highlights from our day here!

 

2014New Website, other highlights and cruising towards 2015!

Meanwhile plenty of other topics were on our minds and on our plates – the launch of our fantastic new website designed by our friends at EPK Design, continued Instagramming, Vining, Tweeting, Facebooking, YouTubing, Pinning, Google Plus-ing and blogging!  We photographed plenty of families including this recent one which we’ll give you just a peek of before their upcoming blog post…

2014

Reflecto had a bit of a rebirth as well after recovering from an injury and continued to focus on his favorite topic……himself.

So that’s our recap – we are thankful for all of you and for a great year and we are looking forward to what will be an amazing 2015!  We wish for all of you peace, health and happiness, and we will see you all soon!

All our best,

Doug and Ally

 

On Location With Old Friends In The Chicago ‘Burbs!

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We were recently in Chicago for a family event and while we were there we connected with my best friend from college in the suburbs for a family session on a brisk fall day in the park.  It’s fun to photograph old friends and to be able to get their kids and ours together for a visit during our road trip.  We go back over 25 years and it’s always a lot of fun when we get together.

Anyone who knows my buddy Barry knows he’s pretty passionate about his dogs and of course Half-Face and Omar were going to be included in the family portraits.  That’s where we’ll start – with all of the family!

Old Friends Great family and are those dogs beautiful or what?

Next we focused on getting some photos without the pups and if you have been a frequent follower of our work you know Ally is a big fan of the “family hug”!

Old Friends

The kids are getting to be so grown up!  To you they just look like great looking kids – for me it’s different because I’ve known them from the time they were born!

Here is a fun little behind the scenes vine from the session:

Next we focused in on getting some shots of just the kids as you can see from the vine.  Here are a couple of great ones…

Old Friends

So cute right?  Little sister loving on her older brother!  Having a boy and girl ourselves we just know this is exactly how they always get along!!!  Right?

And one more of the two of them just relaxing and hanging out together.

Old Friends

So there you have it – on location with old friends in the Chicago ‘burbs – it’s about as good as it gets for us!  We hope you enjoyed these highlights from the session!

United This Family Stands….and Smiles, and Hugs!

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This beautiful family came to the studio recently for a photo session and they were a pleasure to be with.  One of the kids was slightly under the weather, but I won’t even reveal which one because the kid was a total trooper and you would never know which one it was!  Meanwhile everyone got along and picked each other up, made each other laugh and generally had a good time, so yes we can definitely say that united this family stands….and smiles, and hugs!

We stayed with the black background for this session which always works well.  Our primary goal to start out with was to get a classic family shot to be displayed on canvas for the wall above the fireplace, so often we try to make the most important shot the first shot.  We had several to choose from but this one is the winner…

United This Family

What a stunning family right?  Next we spent some time on just the kids, individually as well as some group shots and that’s where we captured one of Ally’s favorite family poses – the family hug!  See what I did there?  You knew that was coming from the blog title….  ha!

United This Family

So cute!  Just great kids and we had fun with them.  Here is our fun behind the scenes vine of the morning with the family hug in action!

Next let’s take a look at this combination of just the mommy with her babies!

United This Family

And lastly let’s celebrate where this family all started – with the happy couple responsible for all this love!

United This Family

 

So there it is – our wonderful united family!  They are totally worthy of being the subjects of the first blog post on our brand new website!  We hope you enjoyed the photos!