Tag Archives: Facebook Live

Scoring the Brains, Brawn, and Beauty Hat Trick With Senior Spokesmodel Morgan!

Morgan has been on the radar here for a while – usually we’re the ones out recruiting seniors to be our spokesmodels, but this time it was Morgan who recruited us!  You could say that she skated right into our zone, shot and scored, and we’re pretty happy that she did!  In all seriousness, we couldn’t have known that the U.S. Women’s Hockey team would make the type of splash that they did with the gold medal shootout in this year’s Olympics in PyeongChang in such dramatic fashion when we started talking to Morgan, but now that it happened and it has brought women’s hockey into the spotlight more than ever we are even more excited to work with Morgan.  She and her mom Jodi brought so much energy (not to mention cupcakes) to the studio and Morgan personifies everything that is great about these athletes – a sweetheart who can go cute, glam, playful, and pretty but is also dead serious about her hockey and can kick your ass.  We definitely scored a hat trick with spokesmodel Morgan.

A Photographic Hat Trick With Spokesmodel Morgan!

So in this case we’ve got the brains, brawn and beauty hat trick, and we’ll start with the brawn/beauty combo before we go to just beauty – as for the brains you’ll just have to take our word for it!

Spokesmodel Morgan

How cool!!!  We can’t look at this photo without being reminded of last year’s spokesmodel kickoff with another bad ass beauty you may remember – Olivia!  This time Morgan combining the black and blowy setup with the sports theme gave us a killer result!

We also have some behind the scenes fun as usual – first with our Instagram Livestream that we have posted on our YouTube channel – take a look (and we apologize for some of the audio trouble on this one – seems like user error as yours truly may have been covering the mic with a finger or thumb….)!

Moving right along let’s take a look at a couple more outfits and backdrops starting with the Def Leppard rocker chick look!  And why not – Photograph is the best rock song about photography ever isn’t it?  You can actually read about that right here on this blog in this piece I wrote back in 2013 about the top 10 songs about photography, but I digress….    Check out this rockin’ shot of Morgan…

Spokesmodel Morgan

Got a photograph!!!  Picture of!!!

Now let’s go to a change of pace, and style as we move over to the purple and this super cute outfit:

Spokesmodel Morgan

Pretty in Purple!

We have one more behind the scenes livestream too – this time on Facebook Live and this was a fun family affair with many of Morgan’s crew chiming in on the live broadcast – including some hilarious trolling from her little brother.  Hehe…   As a side note this was our very first Facebook Creator livestream that includes the fancy shmancy intro and outro!  Check it out!

We’ll leave you now with one more photo from the brown backdrop with this fun and playful close up of our girl:

Spokesmodel Morgan

Awesome and adorable.

And there you have it – a hat trick indeed and we hope you enjoyed the highlights of our day with Morgan!  The class of 2019 is off to a fantastic start!

Equipment used:

These are our affiliate links to the products we used on this session:

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Frameable Faces Photography
**********************************************
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!
************************************************
Ally & Doug can be reached at the studio at tel:248-790-7317 or emailed at mailto:info@frameablefaces.com
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***************************************­*******
Being “Frameable” is an attitude, a community, a way of life – a life you would want to celebrate and display on your walls for all to see!  Tell us… ARE YOU FRAMEABLE?
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Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World!  Click here!

 

 

 

 

Facebook Creator, SEO & more – Doug’s Social Stream Of Consciousness

 

Facebook Creator

A huge development just happened in the world of Facebook.  The launch of Facebook Creator is a pretty big deal for Livestreamers on the platform and we were able to download the app, set it up and go live with a bevy of new features yesterday in no time!  Here is the actual broadcast:

Thoughts & Tips on Facebook Creator

Let me take a second here to point out a couple of things and dissect our approach just on this first test of the new features in a screenshot graphic and then we’ll discuss further:

Facebook CreatorYou can see in the broadcast we were able to bring Jenny Q right onto the screen (with a simple click of her comment)!  There’s even a little video icon within the comments of your viewers while you’re live that lets you know who is available to join. 

Now I’m not going to go into a bunch of detail about how to set this up on Facebook – instead I’m going to direct you to the link that walked me through it on Social Media Examiner written by Peg Fitzpatrick.  As a side note it was Ai Addyson-Zhang‘s tweet of the article that led me to it by a simple #FacebookCreator hashtag search.

Meanwhile here’s a tip – you don’t have to purchase Canva For Work (as mentioned in the article) in order to get a transparent overlay on your screen.  You can create a basic graphic in the free version of Canva and then select for it to be transparent right in the Creator app and it will convert it for you.  Canva For Work might give you a little more control over this but you can get around it if you’re starting out. 

Having the graphics on your screen is nice – similar to what I used to do with OBS for Periscope broadcasts for certain shows.  Now granted they aren’t as flexible – you can’t change them up on the fly during a broadcast, but they are cool to have there as I outlined in the graphic above.  The option to add prerecorded bumpers (prerecorded video intros like your favorite TV shows for example) at the beginning and end of the live broadcast is really nice too.  We haven’t done this yet but you can bet I’m looking for ways to use all of these tools to create new content for us on Facebook as well as for my social media clients.  For those of you who tune in to our Periscope broadcasts don’t worry, there are NO plans to move the Doug & Ally Morning Show to Facebook!  If you’re curious here is an article I wrote earlier this year that compares and contrasts the two platforms which is still pretty on point – there have been a few changes since then obviously, but the basics remain the same.

A Couple of SEO thoughts…

I’m no expert when it comes to SEO but I have a basic working understanding of it.  By using plugins like Yoast here for WordPress I’ve been able to properly place my content on the Internet so that it ranks well in search results on Google in our home base of West Bloomfield for example.  Now, some might say one of the flaws in our SEO strategy is that we cast too wide a net which doesn’t allow us to dominate a niche and the people we snag aren’t as targeted as they could be.  We are a high end / low volume photography studio.  It’s just me and Ally and we put a ton of effort, heart and soul into every client and every portrait session.  We bring a ton of experience and expertise to the table.  We aren’t for everybody – we aren’t a cheap studio, don’t want to be, and yet we rank for plenty of general searches such as “West Bloomfield Photographer” which doesn’t discriminate between different tastes or budgets.

Facebook Creator

So what’s the answer?  As I said I’m not an expert and I’m not ready to cast a smaller more targeted net on the web for “higher end” clients only – I’m not even sure there’s a way to do that – to only get ranked for clients who want the “best experience”…  I think I’m good with how we present and differentiate ourselves online with social media and our owned online assets.  I say for SEO just make sure you’re found first and foremost as a general rule and then make sure people can tell that you are a quality outfit when they find you.  In the meantime though here’s my advice if your net is a little on the wide side:

I had someone call asking about pricing for a portrait session the other day.  I talked him briefly through the process and the pricing and we were way out of the budget he was looking for – he wanted something really simple.  Instead of turning my nose up at him I helped him through his options and what the differences are, and ultimately referred him to Focal Point in Farmington.  They are a higher volume studio than us with a large staff and more basic options available.  It won’t be the same experience as working with us but this guy wasn’t looking for the “best” – he was just looking for something “good” and economical.  Nothing wrong with that.  Focal Point been good to work with for us with seniors for class composites, they are a local family owned studio, and I still helped this gentleman – I’m comfortable sending him there because they are a professional outfit.  The ease of entry has allowed too many non-professionals into this industry so I want to support actual studios.  You uplift your profession, you play nicely in the sandbox and if you are in the business of helping people then do it wherever you can whether someone becomes your client or not.  It’s good karma.

What are your thoughts on these topics?  Are you using Facebook Creator yet?  Have a good SEO take?  Let me know!

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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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Ally & Doug can be reached at the studio at tel:248-790-7317 or emailed at mailto:info@frameablefaces.com
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Being “Frameable” is an attitude, a community, a way of life – a life you would want to celebrate and display on your walls for all to see!  Tell us… ARE YOU FRAMEABLE?
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Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World!  Click here!

 

Is Organic Reach Dead On Facebook? Is This A Legit Question?

Organic Reach

Is organic reach dead on Facebook?  Do you have to spend advertising dollars to reach anyone on Facebook now?  I hear people say this more and more….  As I’ve written here before I participate weekly in a live Twitter chat and broadcast on Periscope called #LetsLivestream.  It’s always a good discussion with many great guests and nice production value hosted by Jonathan Tripp, and once in a while a topic or a take in the conversation gets me thinking about a blog post.  This week the topic was promotion of your live streams – best practices for promoting, various tools etc.  Question 4 is the one that got me going:

Organic Reach

Here was my answer:

Organic Reach

A bit of a contrarian view perhaps (Wait – MOI?  A contrarian view?), and even though I referenced Periscope in my tweet (keep in mind the livestream takes place ON Periscope), I continued on to include Facebook Live in my point in the chat.  At that point my esteemed friend Jenn Nelson of @JennsLIVE & @WineAntics who helps produce the show chimed in with the comment “ORGANIC REACH IS DEAD ON FACEBOOK!!!”  And then this happened:

Organic ReachOrganic ReachOrganic ReachOrganic Reach

This was going nowhere.  We agreed to continue the discussion offline after the show which we did.

So Is Organic Reach Indeed Dead On Facebook?

I sent her these screen shots of recent analytics for our Facebook page with the organic reach numbers – these represent all the posts we made on the Frameable Faces page from 10/3/17 to 11/14/17:

Organic Reach

Note that as of this writing we have a TOTAL of 1792 followers of our page.  You too can be a follower!  Give us a “Like”!!!  Okay sorry that was very shameless and spammy.  I digress.  But the point is you’ll note in the numbers above that virtually ALL of our reach has been non-paid.  There is one sliver of darker orange that represents a bit of boosted / paid reach when we spent a couple dollars to get one post going a little.  In this snapshot of time the reach on our posts range anywhere from 188 at the lowest to 2.6k at the highest and roughly half of these were Livestreams.  The livestreams didn’t have the peaks and valleys that the other posts did, generally ranging between a more consistent 500-1000.  Meanwhile, YES – we still get plenty of organic reach and a handful of posts still go beyond the followers of our page without paying on Facebook!

Is This Even A Legit Question?

Now here is where the debate gets interesting.  Jenn’s point which is shared by many is that Facebook doesn’t just automatically dole out free reach for your business page anymore.  And she’s right to a point.  Little by little Facebook has pulled back on how much they’ll push your content out to your followers, and many feel like it’s become closer and closer to a full on pay-to-play model to get any reach.  Each time the announcement / rumor comes out that they’ve tweaked the algorithm again my response is the very same every time:  Crappy content continues to get less organic reach on #Facebook. Good content still gets plenty. frameablefaces.com/2017-11-16-organic-reach-dead-facebook/ Share on X

So my question is what IS organic reach?  See the following conversation between Jenn and me:

Organic ReachOrganic Reach

How great is Jenn?  Give her a like / follow!  But here’s the question (to her point), a typical post of hers might only reach 40 people on Facebook on its own.  That’s what Facebook is just handing her out of the gate.  I would still argue that that is still not purely an automatic just because she posted – those 40 people on some level have to be 1) followers that have 2) likely shown some affinity towards her page through their Facebook behavior.  Now once someone shares it it may bump right up to 200 and so on.  Isn’t that STILL “organic”?  In other words, good content that compels people to share will still gain reach organically.  If that’s not still considered organic then what’s the point of even talking about “organic reach”?  As I said to Jenn what’s the point of even creating content in the first place if no one is going to share it?  If a post falls in the Facebook Forest and no one sees it did it really happen?  Shares, likes, comments – engagement – is part of the deal with organic.  That’s the reason we do this in the first place.

Which brings us back to the same old tried and true principle of Facebook and ALL social media in general.  Make sure you are entertaining, teaching, engaging – providing value with good content and you will still get that organic reach!!!!  I created this meme a while back as kind of my favorite quote for small businesses – kind of my little calling card….  follow this and yes – there is still organic reach to be had everywhere on social media.  Even on Facebook.

Organic Reach

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Frameable Faces Photography
**********************************************
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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Ally & Doug can be reached at the studio at tel:248-790-7317 or emailed at mailto:info@frameablefaces.com
************************************************
***************************************­*******
Being “Frameable” is an attitude, a community, a way of life – a life you would want to celebrate and display on your walls for all to see!  Tell us… ARE YOU FRAMEABLE?
**********************************************
Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World!  Click here!

How Important Should Analytics Be To Your LiveStreaming Strategy?

Analytics

An exchange I had on twitter yesterday got me thinking…   Of course I often go to football for analogies because I have a background there, so as a former player and a football “purist” I may enjoy comparing statistics for fun, but I would never play “fantasy football”.  I never have and never will.  I actually like statistics – I do.  I’ll even use them from time to time in debates about teams and players and who was better.  However, analysis can cause paralysis and “fantasy football” takes analysis (and analytics) to the point where the appeal and the game of “fantasy football” itself actually has little to do with the team sport of football. 

Meanwhile I participate in a live twitter chat and Livestream every Wednesday at 3PM EST called #LetsLivestream which you can tune into on Periscope at http://pscp.tv/letslivestream/.  This week the topic was centered around favorite Livestream apps and one of the questions was as follows:

Analytics

If you aren’t quite sure what a twitter chat is, it’s where a meeting, presentation, or just a conversation centers around questions on a topic that are put out to the group with a selected hashtag and the questions are tweeted out as “Q1” etc. as you see above.  You then can jump in the conversation by using the hashtag and answering the question with an “A1” etc.  My off-the-cuff answer to this question was “A6 Important yes – they don’t DICTATE a TON of what we do per se for LIVE, but we definitely use them  As a side note Eggdrp and FullScope are the two main websites we use to grab our analytics for our Periscope broadcasts.  Facebook Live and YouTube provide plenty on their own.

At this point an exchange ensued where a Canadian Livestreaming company named Livescale chimed in and replied to my tweet stressing the importance of analytics – that’s one of the great things about a twitter chat – you meet people and have conversations around a shared interest – twitter should be SOCIAL!  Don’t forget that.  But the exchange got me thinking as you can see by my reply:

Analytics

How Important Should Analytics Be?

My reply is a perfect lead in to the football analogy.  See here is the thing…  Analytics – statistics – data – numbers that tell you how many viewers you had watching on a broadcast, how many comments they made, how long they watched for, how many times they shared in the app or on other platforms, how many times they took screenshots or gave other feedback like hearts on Periscope – all these numbers can give you an idea of how successful the broadcast was depending on your goals.  They can tell you what your growth looks like over time and give you endless ways to measure how you’re doing.  Livescale isn’t wrong.  These numbers are indeed important.  For example, Tom Brady (another #10 at Michigan after me – ha) is the greatest quarterback to ever play the game of football, and as a quarterback he is responsible for commanding the offense down the field to score more points than the other team to win games.  He handles the ball on every offensive play and if you look at his statistics they tell the story of a guy who yes, would be considered at the top based on the numbers:

Tons of statistics there – he’s thrown for over 61 thousand yards and over 450 touchdowns.  The numbers dotting his career in bold indicate statistics where he was number one in the NFL in that statistic.  These are just regular season statistics – he’s also been the winning Super Bowl QB more than anyone in history.  The data goes on and on, and these statistics / analytics tell the story of success on a massive scale.

Now let’s look at Larry Allen….

Analytics

In my opinion Larry Allen was the most dominant offensive lineman to ever play.  As a Dallas Cowboys fan I probably watched Larry Allen in around 140-ish of the 176 games he played for Dallas (on TV) and he was a beast.  Strong, massive, quick, nasty – a first ballot Hall of Famer.  And just look at those stats….  Wait what?  You see, while his coaches may have been breaking down his game films and grading him out on his performances, the only official statistics for Larry are the 4 fumbles that happened nearby him on the field that he was able to recover over the course of his career.  As an offensive lineman Larry may have never touched the ball aside from those 4 times in 14 years.  So how do we know Larry was successful?  Because we were there watching Larry – watching him move, neutralize and flatten defenders one after the other.  There are no official statistics for what Larry did and it doesn’t matter.  Statistics DON’T tell the story in this case.  

It’s not all that different in Livestreaming.  Analytics don’t always tell the whole story.  Sure they are important and shouldn’t be ignored.  However if only 10 people watched your broadcast but it changed their outlook, started a relationship or converted a client then it may have been a more successful broadcast than if 500 people were there live and none of that happened.  If one person watching your broadcast made a comment that opened your eyes to a new way of thinking that’s better than 578 comments of nonsense because you’re broadcasting drama that attracts people like a train wreck and you’re not even looking at the comments because you’re so wrapped up in your own…..drama… 

The same goes for all social media – build your community organically and yes track your analytics.  Watch for trends and try to track towards your goals.  But make sure you focus on your relationships and the vibe and culture around your brand, your broadcasts and your content as a whole.  Be true to that and then the analytics – while they are important – won’t be the only thing that tells your story, and they shouldn’t be.

BECOME A PATRON!  Subscribe at our Patreon page for tips, tutorials, podcasts and even individual coaching on your photography or social media!  
**********************************************
Frameable Faces Photography
**********************************************
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!
************************************************
Ally & Doug can be reached at the studio at tel:248-790-7317 or emailed at mailto:info@frameablefaces.com
************************************************
***************************************­*******
Being “Frameable” is an attitude, a community, a way of life – a life you would want to celebrate and display on your walls for all to see!  Tell us… ARE YOU FRAMEABLE?
**********************************************
Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World!  Click here!

 

 

Why Local Brands Should Be Killing It On Facebook Live – Periscope not so much…

Recently I wrote an article here on the blog comparing and contrasting live streaming platforms to help people make some informed choices on which platform to consider between Facebook Live and Periscope for different types of strategies.  It’s a solid piece if I do say so myself and I enlisted 4 people in the social media / entrepreneurial game I respect to include their take.  That article is still on point and relevant, but this is basically a part 2 digging into a main advantage Facebook Live has for local brands.

Facebook Live

I’m seeing more and more jarring evidence lately that points to Facebook Live as the best opportunity for small businesses and especially brick and mortars that operate mostly on a local level like us.  Now to be clear, here at Frameable Faces we are NOT planning on “switching” to Facebook Live from Periscope overall.  Periscope is still our first love for live streaming and our favorite especially for our Doug & Ally Morning Show that we start most of our days with.  We don’t have plans to change that.  But something happened this past Saturday that cannot be ignored as an obvious example of why Facebook Live is starting to pull ahead for our strategy as a photography studio as opposed to morning show hosts.

We broadcasted parts of an amazing photo session with twin babies…

Saturday we did a photo session here in the studio for twin one month old babies.  The article with sneak peeks from that session will be available here on the blog soon.  We did a bit of live streaming of the session and it was just cuteness overload!  We’ve had plenty of babies in the studio and plenty of twins, but never twin babies!  We started with Periscope and we even mentioned to our Periscope community earlier in the morning that we might go live in the afternoon with twin babies.

Periscope Results:

We Periscoped for 13 minutes and 13 seconds.  68 people watched it live.  Everyone was genuinely enjoying it.  People were commenting.  Since the broadcast ended 39 people have watched the replay (7 more since the screen shot below) – most replay views on Periscope happen within 24 hours of a broadcast on the app.  This is all fine – it was a fun scope and over 100 people got to enjoy it – nothing wrong with that at all!  Here are the analytics provided by Periscope:

Facebook Live

One more sidenote – as you can see above the thumbnail (the representative image from the broadcast) is me with a relatively silly face.  NOT the amazingly cute twin babies from the broadcast.  I have pointed out how important it is to be able to choose a custom thumbnail to the Periscope team but they haven’t made this a priority.

Facebook Live Results:

We then went live on Facebook Live right after the Periscope broadcast for 8 minutes and 29 seconds.  There were maybe 5 – 10 people who tuned in to watch live.  There weren’t many live comments if any…  Granted we don’t broadcast on Facebook Live often or at regular times which can contribute to a small live audience, plus there are delays on the comments and it’s not as fun of an experience on Facebook.  BUT…..  I tagged Carlos (the dad) in the post who then shared the post and tagged me and his wife Gina in the post (he only tagged me and not Ally and me him and not Gina because he and I did the FB friending exchange) and then I went back and tagged Ally in the post, and then all his friends started to see the post in their feed, and a few of them shared the post, and then more people saw the post, and more and more people liked the post, which Facebook likes, so Facebook showed it to more people, and then a few more of those people shared the post, and so more people saw the post and they liked (and loved, and haha’d, and wow’d) the post and commented on the post and Facebook liked that even more so Facebook showed it to even more people and pretty soon the video had reached 3648 people and 2129 people watched it.  Oh and there’s definitely a chance some people watched it because I chose an image of Harrison and Henry surrounded by Ally and their parents to represent the broadcast as you can see below (as opposed to just my face with a weird expression which I didn’t choose).

Facebook Live

When a Periscope broadcast ends it just sort of fades into the distance of the feed of ended broadcasts…  When a Facebook broadcast ends that’s when it starts to get going if it’s worthy of watching.  In the case of Harrison and Henry boy did it get going….   let’s look at a few more stats which Facebook provides in about 200 different ways, sliced and diced – more information than you would know what to do with about the demographics of who watched – age, gender and a lot more.  With Periscope you have to use third party apps like Fullscope or Eggdrp (both great by the way) to get any analytics worth a darn.

Now check THIS out.  Here’s a visual representation of the viral nature of a really good Facebook Live video that I described in my run on sentence above (which was done purposely for emphasis haha).  

Facebook Live

This broadcast was the only one in the time frame of this graph.  Note how the views climbed on the third and fourth days…  the broadcast was on Saturday May 20th, but on Tuesday May 23rd 653 people watched it!  You can see it spreading and the buzz growing!  But wait there’s more….

Remember the emphasis in the title of this article is on local brands right?

Facebook Live

This graphic shows me that 70.3% of the total minutes viewed of this video were viewed in MICHIGAN.  Our studio is IN Michigan.  This is the core of our target market for studio portraits from a practical standpoint.  That’s who we’re reaching on Facebook – lots of potential clients who are friends of Carlos & Gina and friends of friends of Carlos & Gina.  We have a physical storefront where we take pictures and it’s in West Bloomfield, MICHIGAN.  On Periscope our audiences are 10% from Michigan at best and that’s probably very generous, not that there’s any data anywhere that tells me this conclusively.  Now once again – that’s fine – we love our international community and the friends we’ve made around the world on Periscope – that’s part of what’s amazing about Periscope.  We’ve traveled to photograph people we’ve met on Periscope which has been amazing and we’re even expanding our photo restoration business to clients on Periscope which isn’t bound by geography.

But if I’m advising a new local brick and mortar store on where to start broadcasting live and build community to get more people showing up at their door and becoming clients, I’m recommending Facebook first.  I’m not saying don’t do Periscope per se, but if I’m picking one it’s Facebook.  If I’m recommending a platform primarily to see the world, and have an amazing time for entertainment purposes and making new friends from everywhere, I’m still recommending Periscope.

Since we started broadcasting on Facebook (which we made a part of our strategy well after Periscope) we have more people saying “Hey I saw you guys doing one of your live uh…video things – like online!  Looks like fun!”  And I always would ask “Oh cool!  On Periscope?”  and they would say “On what?” and then I would say “Oh wait maybe you saw us on Facebook (remembering that yes we go live on Facebook now too)” and then they would say “RIGHT! Yeah I saw you on Facebook!”  You know why they say that?  Because EVERYONE IS ON FACEBOOK.  Some are on Twitter where you can also catch Periscope broadcasts but not nearly as many and fewer still are actually on the Periscope app.  When we started broadcasting on Periscope on March 31st, 2015 it wasn’t long before we were sure that within a year or two everyone would be on Periscope because it’s that amazing.  Well we still think it’s amazing – we were right about that.  But shockingly to us most people walking around on the street – the people we want to walk into our mall and into our store – yeah those people – still don’t know what it is.

These two broadcasts of the twins were done back to back, one right after the other with the same subject.  Vastly different results.  Results that favor Facebook Live for small local brick and mortar businesses.  It’s the most obvious example I have, and while one example doesn’t necessarily prove anything, I can tell you that the conclusions I’m drawing here are not just based on this example alone…

Food for thought.  For you live streamers – what do you think?  There are more layers to this topic to be sure but I’d love to hear your thoughts…

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Frameable Faces Photography
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Doug Cohen provides social media training and services and can be reached at the following:
Mobile: 248-346-4121
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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!
************************************************
Ally & Doug can be reached at the studio at tel:248-790-7317 or emailed at mailto:info@frameablefaces.com
************************************************
***************************************­*******
Being “Frameable” is an attitude, a community, a way of life – a life you would want to celebrate and display on your walls for all to see!  Tell us… ARE YOU FRAMEABLE?
**********************************************
Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World!  Click here!

 

Charity Channels Her Inner Charm For Her Champion Senior Session!

Inner charm, outer beauty, inner beauty, outer charm – all of it – Charity channels it!  Charity is another North Farmington Raider which is always a bonus for us as fellow Raider alums and we had a fantastic session with her!  Charity had to be a champ because it was chilly out – really chilly (how many words can Doug squeeze into this blog post that begin with “ch”?).  But she stuck it out and delivered some pure awesomeness in Pontiac for some city shots before we made it back to the warm confines of the studio…  Let’s get to it!

Charity Channels Her Inner Charm…

Charity is a sweetie and a dancer too so she’s got a lot going for her.  Her mom Caren joined us as we headed out on location.  First we have this photo on the fire escape…

Charity Channels

Love this because her outfit blends right in with the colors around her for one thing, and she just looks happy and great all the way around.  We actually have plenty of behind the scenes to share as well, and we’ll start with the replay of the Periscope live broadcast.  You can download the app and be part of the fun at @FrameableFaces at this link or you can also just watch from twitter here.

I have to mention that there is an amazing moment on this broadcast where Caren got very emotional watching her girl have her senior pictures taken and like a reporter I took a risk and ran over to catch it and ask her how she was doing – it was a good cry and so sweet!  Caren was great sport about it too!

Awww…..

At this point we relocated for a wardrobe change to another spot on a different set of steps and had some great backlight going for this one.

Charity Channels

That lighting and that smile!

You would never know we were pretty cold by the results…. and at this point it was time to get back to the studio.

First we have a close up of our girl on the red paper backdrop which is one of our faves for sure.

Charity Channels

We also have more behind the scenes fun this time from the replay of our Facebook Live broadcast!

Here’s a dramatic black and white version of our “black and blowy” setup that we are in love with…

Charity Channels

And we’ll end it with the Snapchat story we posted that day – you should be following us there too!  Snap us back!

So there you have it!  When Charity channels her inner charm it comes through with wonderful outer results!  We hope you enjoyed our highlights from our day with her!

Equipment used:

These are our affiliate links to the products we used on this session:

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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!
************************************************
Ally & Doug can be reached at the studio at tel:248-790-7317 or emailed at mailto:info@frameablefaces.com
************************************************
***************************************­*******
Being “Frameable” is an attitude, a community, a way of life – a life you would want to celebrate and display on your walls for all to see!  Tell us… ARE YOU FRAMEABLE?
**********************************************
Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World!  Click here!

 

 

Sahana’s Senior Session Is Pure Sunshine And Splendor!

Sahana’s senior session was pure sunshine and splendor and it comes as no surprise – we have known Sahana for years and we had been looking forward to the day when we would have her here as a senior!  She is a sweetheart and a talented violinist to boot.  We also love when we have the chance to photograph traditional clothing – in this case an Indian half saree which is so colorful!  So we have studio, sunshine, and certainly splendor so let’s get to it!

Sahana’s Senior Session…

Sahana’s mom Sandya came along for the session and she is wonderful too so we were in for a great day.  We started in the studio and went with a couple different outfits and backdrops.  We’ll start with the black background:

Sahana's Senior Session

Beautiful – and we haven’t even gotten to the “sunshine and splendor” yet!  Haha…

We also have plenty of behind the scenes fun from the live broadcasts we did that day.  First our Periscope broadcast from the studio – if you want to be a part of our shows you can download the twitter-owned app and follow us at @FrameableFaces at this link, or if you just want to watch from twitter you can follow us here:

Here’s one more photo from the studio on the white backdrop – loving the ripped white jeans on white look!

Sahana's Senior Session

And here is the Facebook Live broadcast from the studio before we head out on location…  🙂

Now it’s time to head out for the:

Pure Sunshine And Splendor!

First we have this wonderful close up – the conditions and the lighting were just right and Ally captured this gorgeous shot of Sahana!  Love that bit of backlight on her hair!

Sahana's Senior Session

We also had some fun with another broadcast outdoors on Periscope while Sahana was in the outfit above:

….and last but not least we have the colorful splendor of the traditional Indian half saree for this wonderful photo!!!

Sahana's Senior Session

So there you have it!  The pure sunshine and splendor of Sahana’s senior session!  We hope you enjoyed the highlights of our day!

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Frameable Faces Photography
**********************************************
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!
************************************************
Ally & Doug can be reached at the studio at tel:248-790-7317 or emailed at mailto:info@frameablefaces.com
************************************************
***************************************­*******
Being “Frameable” is an attitude, a community, a way of life – a life you would want to celebrate and display on your walls for all to see!  Tell us… ARE YOU FRAMEABLE?
**********************************************
Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World!  Click here!

Exploring Detroit With Cady On An Epic Senior Session For The Ages!

All of our high school senior sessions are special – our entire approach is based on it.  We meet with our seniors ahead of time to get to know them and we photograph well under 100 of them so each one is a favorite in some sort of way.  But once in a while the planets align for a senior we’ve known for their entire life and a truly unique experience happens.  That was the case with Cady, and I’ll explain….

An Epic Senior Session…

For starters yes – we have known Cady literally since she was born.  Our families go back for decades so this had that surreal element to it to begin with, and then the session just got better and better from there.  We’ll get to some of that in a minute…  First we did a little studio work including the set up with our Victorian style red couch and the wooden floor – love this:

Cady

Beautiful!

Here is the behind the scenes replay from the Periscope broadcast we did during this setup.  If you want to join in future broadcasts and be a part of the fun you can do it from your smartphone here or you can just watch it from your computer at that link or on twitter.

Here’s a little bonus Facebook Live broadcast that we did of the black and blowy set up in the studio…

Exploring Detroit With Cady!

Here’s where things got even more awesome…  The more you photograph at a given location the better you get to know it and you start exploring a little.  You don’t need to pay attention to directions as much because you already know how to get there.  You can navigate the landscape with ease and let your eye wander towards new and exciting spots you didn’t see before.  We started at Belle Isle where we found some rocks by the water as well as a certain tree where the light was hitting just right and Cady was framed perfectly…

Cady

Wow!

From there we had plans to head over to Eastern Market to find some murals but we stopped in the Warehouse District because I had a hunch there might be some cool stuff down there….  well, there was.

Cady

LOVE this shot!!!

Here is the behind the scenes Periscope from this part of the session….

Now it was time to head over to the Eastern Market where we were going to seek out some cool murals, but we got way more than we bargained for.  There were a couple of abandoned buildings that we noticed the last time we were down there and we wondered what opportunities might await us in a couple of them….  The one we picked was a gold mine of graffiti, debris, and general urban decay.  We could have stayed there all day!!!  And there were several other photographers crawling all over the place too – no wonder.

Here’s a little Facebook Live broadcast we did until I lost my signal….

As another little added bonus since we had no signal deep in this building, I included our snap story from the day – you can add us on Snapchat here!  Snap us back!

And we’ll leave you with one of the photos from the burned out building….

Cady

Just so awesome….  Cady looked amazing and we had so much fun discovering new spots – we could have stayed in Detroit all day!  We hope you enjoyed the highlights from our day!

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Frameable Faces Photography
**********************************************
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!
************************************************
Ally & Doug can be reached at the studio at tel:248-790-7317 or emailed at mailto:info@frameablefaces.com
************************************************
Snapchat: http://snapchat.com/add/frameablefaces
Facebook: http://facebook.com/frameablefaces
Twitter: https://twitter.com/frameablefaces
YouTube: https://youtube.com/frameablefaces
Instagram: https://instagram.com/frameablefaces
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/frameablefaces
***************************************­*******
Being “Frameable” is an attitude, a community, a way of life – a life you would want to celebrate and display on your walls for all to see!  Tell us… ARE YOU FRAMEABLE?
**********************************************
Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World!  Click here!

 

 

We Wouldn’t Josh Ya…Okay Maybe We Would – Here He Is!

Those of you who know us here know that we wouldn’t “Josh ya” – right?  Okay well maybe we would and actually that’s what we’re doing in this post right now!  We bring to you….Josh!  We have known Josh for a long time and he and our daughter Lacey have been friends for years.  We also photographed his older brother Matt for his senior portraits so a little reprise with their mom Gayle was in order and we had a lot of fun and laughs as expected!

Time To Josh Ya…

We had a game plan to do some photos in studio and some on location so let’s start in the studio with the formal look on the grey backdrop!

Josh Ya

Now that’s a fine looking dude.

We also have plenty of behind the scenes live video for you on replay!  Here is the first of a couple Periscopes we did – this one in the studio.  If you don’t have Periscope and you want to join our shows and participate you can download the app and follow us at @FrameableFaces here and if you have twitter and just want to watch from there you can do that too.

Josh is a hockey player too so he changed into his Little Caesars jersey for this next one:

Josh Ya

Nice!

At this point it was time to head out to Heritage Park for some location shots and some more live video!  First again with Periscope.

Here’s one of the location photos which came out quite nicely – Josh was a breeze to work with!

Josh Ya

One more live video this time from Facebook for some more behind the scenes:

And one final photo up close with our man of the hour…

Josh Ya

Sweet!  So there you have it!  We decided to Josh Ya and we don’t feel bad about it one bit.  We hope you enjoyed the highlights of our day with him!

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Frameable Faces Photography
**********************************************
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!
************************************************
Ally & Doug can be reached at the studio at tel:248-790-7317 or emailed at mailto:info@frameablefaces.com
************************************************
Snapchat: http://snapchat.com/add/frameablefaces
Facebook: http://facebook.com/frameablefaces
Twitter: https://twitter.com/frameablefaces
YouTube: https://youtube.com/frameablefaces
Instagram: https://instagram.com/frameablefaces
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/frameablefaces
***************************************­*******
Being “Frameable” is an attitude, a community, a way of life – a life you would want to celebrate and display on your walls for all to see!  Tell us… ARE YOU FRAMEABLE?
**********************************************
Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World!  Click here!

 

Like An Expressive Melody, This Aria Is Aptly Named!

According to Wikipedia, an aria started out originally as any expressive melody usually performed by a singer.  In a culture where our names don’t always mean something (as famously pointed out by Butch in Pulp Fiction) this is a case where it does and it works for this girl!  She is a sweetheart who has been a friend of our Lacey’s since they were toddlers!  She’s bright, beautiful and nice – like an expressive melody indeed!  As one of our spokesmodels for the class of 2017 this is the second time we’ve been able to get out on location and photograph her this year alone, but she’s been in front of Ally’s camera several times over the years!  With her mom (and our friend) Rachel along for the ride, it was another fun and epic day!

Aria Is Aptly Named…

This session was almost exclusively on location and our Aria was prepared with makeup done by Mandy Rose from Mandy Rose Studio – little shout out here to Mandy as she does amazing work!  Aria was stylin’ too and with that said we should get to a few of the photos…

Aria

Beautiful!

Now let’s mix in some behind the scenes fun from the day, first with our 6 second looping vine:

And now let’s see one of the replays of the live Periscope broadcasts from the session!  If you aren’t following us on Periscope you can do it and be a part of our broadcasts in the live chat here, or you can just watch on twitter here.

We also did a quick Facebook Live broadcast while we were at Heritage Park too – take a look:

….and here’s a fun photo from the blue door in the broadcast above!

Aria

Love that one…!

At this point we changed locations to head over to Birmingham to get a few city shots.  Here’s a cool one in the alleyway:

Aria We also broadcasted one more time for some more behind the scenes fun in Birmingham on Periscope!

As we near the end of the story we’ll leave you with one more of Aria on the stairway – step by step we know she’ll be smiling the whole way!

Aria

And there you have it!  Aria is truly a melody of a girl and she’s aptly named for sure!  We hope you enjoyed the highlights of our day with her!

**********************************************
Frameable Faces Photography
**********************************************
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!
************************************************
Ally & Doug can be reached at the studio at tel:248-790-7317 or emailed at mailto:info@frameablefaces.com
************************************************
Snapchat: http://snapchat.com/add/frameablefaces
Facebook: http://facebook.com/frameablefaces
Twitter: https://twitter.com/frameablefaces
YouTube: https://youtube.com/frameablefaces
Instagram: https://instagram.com/frameablefaces
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/frameablefaces
***************************************­*******
Being “Frameable” is an attitude, a community, a way of life – a life you would want to celebrate and display on your walls for all to see!  Tell us… ARE YOU FRAMEABLE?
**********************************************
Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World!  Click here!