Tag Archives: facebook

We Wouldn’t Jest – Jake Jammed On His Senior Session!

No – we’re not here to jest.  We are totally serious.  Jake JAMMED on his senior session and that’s the truth!  This session was fantastic and we’re excited to show you the results!  We’ve known Jake and his family for years going back to little league baseball days when I coached our son Tony and Jake’s younger brother with Jake’s dad, and Jake’s mom Nancy joined us on the session – much fun!

Jake Jammed

We started off in the studio which we always do for afternoon sessions and we got off to a great start:

Jake Jammed

Great shot right?

We also have some behind the scenes fun here from the replays of our live broadcasts – first with Facebook Live:

And here is one more photo from the studio made during the video above:

Jake Jammed

Looking great!

At this point we headed out to Heritage Park – which as we have since found out is now restricting access for photographers… but that’s another story.  In the meantime we still love the place and you should visit there – it makes for great photos!

Jake Jammed

Let’s also take a look at our other video replay this time from YouTube Live.  You can also subscribe to our channel for plenty more videos where this came from!

We’ll leave you with one more photo from this killer session with Jake!

Jake Jammed

Awesome!  Jake jammed on his session for sure and we hope you enjoyed the highlights of our time with him!

Equipment used:

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

**********************************************
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!

 

Capturing Cara With Some Completely Cool Shots In Detroit!

Capturing Cara has become plenty fun for us here – she is a current spokesmodel for the class of 2018 so you may have seen her here before on her spokesmodel session, and she rocked her return!  Cara’s brother Ben was a Frameable senior as well and parents Gina and Kenny round out a great family!  Gina came on the session with us and we knew we’d be in for a fun time as long as the weather held up – for a while there the forecast wasn’t looking good but we lucked out!  We headed down to the D and started out on Belle Isle…

Capturing Cara!

Here’s a spectacular shot of Cara with the Detroit River and the Renaissance Center in the background!

Capturing Cara

 

There are so many amazing spots on Belle Isle – here’s a little behind the scenes fun from our YouTube Live broadcast there!

…and one more shot before we focus on the Eastern Market area….

Capturing Cara

LOVE this with the yellow and black with Cara being framed by some yellow too!

At this point we headed over to the Eastern Market and Dequindre Cut to take advantage of the many murals and locations to work with there.  Let’s start with Cara with a mural backdrop:

Capturing Cara

Loving it…

Let’s also see some more behind the scenes fun from our Facebook Live broadcast while we were down there!

And one more from this doorway we found – Cara was in the zone at this point – capturing Cara was a breeze!

Capturing Cara

A great day to be sure and we hope you enjoyed the highlights of our day capturing Cara!

Equipment used:

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

**********************************************
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!

Rocking Senior Pictures and Getting It Done In The Swamp Is Justin’s Jam

We are on a roll with those West Bloomfield Lakers right now and these sessions have been killer!  But more importantly these seniors have been awesome and Justin is no exception.  Justin brought the whole fam-tourage with him and everyone had fun.  Actually Justin’s mom Christin had been to the studio for her own shots a while back so this was a fun reunion of sorts.  Justin was still in the thick of preparing for the football season at “The Swamp” which is the nickname of the West Bloomfield football stadium and we had plans to get some football shots in since football is Justin’s jam – but more on that later….

Starting out in Pontiac…

We wanted to get some cool urban shots first so off to Pontiac we went and found a cool new spot we had never used before – it’s Justin’s spot now (we name new spots after the senior who pioneers it)!

Justin's Jam

Good lookin’ dude!  Plus that lighting!  We started in the evening and got some of that golden hour sun…

We also have some fun behind the scenes action from the live streaming we did during the session – first in Pontiac on Facebook Live:

We also grabbed this cool photo with the little mirror image reflection…

Justin's Jam

Back to the studio for some fire…

We love setting things on fire here as you may know…  here’s the behind the scenes from the YouTube Live broadcast – be sure to subscribe to our channel if you visit! 

….and here is the fiery result!

Justin's Jam

Justin’s Jam

Night time sessions are rare for us but sometimes they can be so cool!  We headed over to the Swamp where you can see #32 flying around getting it done for those Lakers this fall!  A little off camera flash and a stationary FJ Westcott Ice Light and voila!!!

Justin's Jam

How cool is that?  An awesome session all the way around – we hope you enjoyed the highlights of Justin’s jam!

 Equipment used:

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

**********************************************
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!

 

 

 

 

Reaching An Even Higher Level With Lauren Back In Detroit!

Yes we are huge fans of Lauren and her mom Gabrielle, and it’s been so much fun having Lauren represent our studio as a spokesmodel for the class of 2018!  Her spokesmodel session was truly epic and we spent much of it in Detroit at the old Michigan Building and around Eastern Market.  It was one of those sessions that sticks out for sure – just awesome.  So we had a slight dilemma – we loved exploring around Detroit and they wanted to go back for Lauren’s senior session.  Hey we’re always up for a Detroit session since there is so much going on down there and so many amazing places to shoot.  The question was could we possibly top what we already did down there?  Hmmmmm….  Could we reach an even higher level with Lauren?

Reaching an even higher level with Lauren…

Ally predicted that we would indeed be able to kick it up yet another notch.  And frankly I was confident too – we usually do.  We suggested Belle Isle which hadn’t been on Lauren’s radar but she trusted us.  Besides there was a little discussion around whether a beach shot might be nice – we had never used the Belle Isle Beach.  So we set out with plenty of possibility and adventure in the air and the results?  Well…… see for yourself.

Higher Level

Great one to start with right?  Love the framing of our girl with the vines!

We also have plenty of behind the scenes fun as usual with some live broadcast replays (excuse my raggedy voice – I was recovering from being pretty well under the weather for a few days).  First we went live on YouTube.  If you want to tune in to other broadcasts be sure to hit the red subscribe button at our channel!

We ended up spending a ton of time on Belle Isle – some shots at the fountain, a few at the willow tree above, and a few over by the conservatory including this colorful one with all the pretty flowers surrounding Lauren!

Higher Level

I also had a little fun of my own with the pano feature on my iPhone – just for fun here is one at the conservatory that I thought was kind of cool…

Higher Level

AMATEUR iPhone panoramic photo for fun!

Next we headed around to the other side of the island to the beach which we pretty much had to ourselves and this turned out to be a great call!  Here is the fun behind the scenes Facebook Live broadcast replay where Gabrielle even took over for a few minutes as guest host as I struggled a little with the wind trying to reflect some light on our subject!

And here is one of the fantastic results.  LOVE this of Lauren…

Higher Level

So yeah…. awesome stuff at Belle Isle!  But we weren’t done….

To The Belt!

The Belt is a very cool alley in downtown Detroit where we’ve taken photos several times and Lauren had her eye on it so we headed over there for a few and we found this ultra cool art gallery there.  They let us come right in and shoot, and sometimes these unplanned things prove to be major highlights!  I took another pano while Ally was setting this one up…

Higher Level

Another AMATEUR iPhone panoramic photo for fun!

And here is the result!!!

Higher Level

Wow right???

What a day – we actually finished it up with lunch at Johnny Noodle King and it was the perfect end to a day we won’t soon forget as we indeed reached a higher level with Lauren in our Detroit return!  We hope you enjoyed the highlights of our day!

Equipment used:

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

**********************************************
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!

We Are Smitten By Sophia and Her Senior Session!

Yes we are smitten by Sophia!  She’s a sweetheart and we had a fantastic senior session with her this week!  There’s a fun backstory here as her mom Rebecca found us on Periscope while watching our Doug & Ally Morning Show, and it’s always fun when we connect with people who tune in from close by so we can meet them easily in person.  And one more funny tidbit here – I saw Sophia the day before her session at her place of work and I was so preoccupied that it didn’t even register when she said “hi” – and when she followed it up with “I’m so excited for my senior pictures tomorrow” I said “Sophia!!!!”  Haha…  

Smitten By Sophia

Meanwhile Sophia was totally prepared for the session and when she walked in with a great wardrobe selection and her makeup done by Mandy Rose we were, well, smitten!  So let’s get to a few of the photos shall we?

We started in the studio on the black background with the “black and blowy” setup with the fan:

Sophia

Stunning right?

As usual we have some fun behind the scenes video from the live broadcasts we did at the time, starting with a Facebook Live broadcast:

Let’s take a peek at one more studio shot on that pink background before we head out…

Sophia

Heading out to Quarton Lake

We actually got lucky with the weather because the forecast had been threatening scattered thunderstorms for days but it didn’t happen!  These next two shots are awesome – starting with this shot at one of our fave spots:

Sophia

Once again I’ll point out how well Sophia made use of her wardrobe – this flowery top is perfect for summer and this setting!

Now let’s take a look at our outdoor broadcast this time from YouTube Live while we were getting the shot above.  Feel free to skip through my and Ally’s silliness in the middle haha…

And we have one more photo to share with the waterfall as a backdrop – the purple coordination here is the topper – just adorable!

Sophia

You can see why we were “smitten with Sophia” – what a session!  We were pretty excited to share these and we hope you enjoyed the highlights of our day!

Equipment used:

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

 
**********************************************
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!
 
 

 

Rolling Into The Class of 2018 Senior Sessions With Ruby!

When you Google the meaning of a Ruby the first thing you see is that it’s a “high energy stone” which makes sense for this Ruby because she is comfortable on a stage.  And we’re comfortable with this Ruby because for starters she’s a legacy Frameable senior here – we met her a couple years ago when her sister Zoe was here.  Besides, she’s got that hint of snark that we love, and we had fun with her on her senior session as we officially kicked off the new class of 2018 sessions!

Rolling With Ruby…

We rolled down to Heritage Park with Ruby on a very muggy and warm day – but it was dry which was all that mattered since there was a brief downpour overhead at the studio right before we headed out.  Ruby’s mom Elyse joined us as well and we love her too – actually you’ll see her doing a little “guest hosting” of the behind the scenes livestreams a bit further down this post – a reprise since she did that two years ago too!  So now let’s focus on Ruby who looked great and did a fantastic job for these photos!

RubyLove that photo!  Great one to start with…

As mentioned we also have plenty of behind the scenes fun – starting with a YouTube Live broadcast getting ready to shoot at Heritage Park…  You can SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube channel here!

Here is one more in the black dress close up – LOVE:

RubyJust gorgeous…

We went with a couple outfit changes on location and we have more behind the scenes for you this time from Facebook Live:

Let’s take a look at one more by the barn door (Ruby’s choice on location) before we head back to the studio for a studio shot…

Ruby

Fabulous!

At this point we were happy to get in the car, blast some A/C and get back to the studio where we got a few shots on the black background like this one here:

Ruby

And there you have it!  The Class of 2018 is officially underway!  Ruby led us off in style and we hope you enjoyed the highlights of our day!

Equipment used:

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

**********************************************
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!

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!

 

 

Shaista Brings Back The Whole Crew and They’re Growing UP!!!

We get excited when Shaista brings back the whole crew!  We started photographing her kids shortly after we opened our studio space here in the Orchard Mall and they are just an awesome family – great kids and much fun to have around.  The wrinkle this time was that Shaista brought her husband Shabbir to get the whole family in the photos!  There’s a little story here – we’ve known Shaista and the kids for years but we never met Shabbir before so the running joke was that he wasn’t real – that we didn’t believe he existed.  Haha!  Well we can now say he does indeed exist and he’s as delightful as we would have expected.  I joked with him that we thought he was a phantom and he replied “Hey I was out working hard for these guys!”  Now that’s a good guy.  So without further adieu let’s take a look at some sneak peeks of this fabulous session!

Shaista Brings Back The Whole Crew…

Let’s start with the whole fam in a portrait with traditional dress which is always a joy – such vibrant colors against the brown earth tones…  love this:

Shaista brings

What an awesome group!

We also have some video replays from the live broadcasts we did during the session for a little behind the scenes fun – first on YouTube Live which we just started doing some of – you can subscribe to our channel here!


  

Next let’s focus in on a photo of just the happy couple!

Shaista brings

They look fantastic!

We also have a little more behind the scenes fun this time from the Facebook Live broadcast we did:


They’re Growing UP!!!

Now let’s focus on the kids!  We have a couple of photos of the 4 of them being, well…..the 4 of them!  Haha!

First in the traditional clothing…

Shaista brings

And next in some casual gear…. love it!

Shaista brings

So fun!!!  You can tell they were having a blast – being kids but still really well behaved – love them!

And there you have it – when Shaista brings back the whole crew we have a ton of fun.  We hope you enjoyed the sneak peeks from their session!

Equipment used:

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

**********************************************
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!

YouTube Gets LIVE, Periscope Monetizes, & More – Doug’s Social Stream of Consciousness

So much has been going on in the social media world this past week (Periscope Monetizes) or so – or at least it seems this way for us.  I’ve got a few topics to cover with a few tips and of course a couple of observations and opinions….

Periscope Monetizes

Let’s get to it, starting with the major headlines for this post…

YouTube Gets LIVE

We had heard about YouTube livestreaming for a while but weren’t sure if it would be on our radar anytime soon.  The rollout seemed somewhat shrouded in mystery as this article from techcrunch.com pointed out last month… But at this point we can tell you that it’s available to verified accounts with at least 100 subscribers, so at the urging of our wonderful Periscope friend Sonam (who loves YouTube Live) we gave it a shot with no warning or announcement…  Here’s the result:

 

We had a lot of fun and we had people there!  There were people we knew and new people we didn’t from shares during the broadcast.  We picked up three new subscribers during the broadcast and we got this little report at the end:

Periscope Monetizes

Observations from a veteran livestreamer but not a YouTube expert:

  • The comments are a little delayed (time from when a viewer comments to the time you see it and respond) but the delay got better over the course of the broadcast
  • You can block a viewer or put one in “time out” for 5 minutes if you’re being trolled
  • Viewers are only allowed to comment so many times – there’s a limit on comments (apparently there is a monetization model that allows you to override this once you get to 1000 subscribers)
  • The comments do not show on the playback so be aware of this if you are creating a video that you want to stand on its own after you finish.  Keep in mind that you can edit, tag, select a thumbnail – all the things that you can do with all other YouTube videos you upload.  We are putting our livestreams there into a separate playlist.
  • Oh – and the filters!!!  You’ll see them above if you watch but here’s a sampling…

Periscope Monetizes

Ally likes the bubbles – I think they’d be cooler if you could pop them… lol

Periscope Monetizes

Taaaaaaake Onnnnnnnn Meeeeeeeee……!  Hehe…

Periscope Monetizes

Paranormal Activity anyone….?

Periscope Monetizes

Vintage grainy black and white…

And of course…. the dance party / disco ball effect…..

Periscope MonetizesPeriscope MonetizesPeriscope MonetizesPeriscope Monetizes

Awesome moves (if we do say so ourselves lol), lots of possibilities, wheels are turning here at Frameable Faces.

A couple more YouTube tips while we’re at it:

  • If you want to get to 100 subscribers so you can go live (once you’ve had your page verified) you should make sure people are able to see whom you’ve subscribed to so they can follow you back if they are so inclined – otherwise they won’t even know you subscribed:
Periscope Monetizes

Make Sure That Third Box Is Unchecked!

One more thing:  Be sure once you do hit 100 subscribers that you claim a custom / vanity URL for your channel!  http://youtube.com/frameablefaces/ looks way better and consistent with our other profiles than some random gibberish.

Periscope Monetizes

Periscope Monetizes

Periscope announced an update that brings monetization to the game for scopers and for the app!  I won’t lay out ALL the details here, but suffice it to say we generally see this as a good thing overall.  Are there questions about what effect this may have on content creation on the app and whether the introduction of money will “infect” the community somehow?  Yeah I suppose.  But this just came out two days ago and you can now purchase coins to use to give three levels of “super hearts” to a broadcaster during a livestream there.  We’ve already jumped in giving and receiving.  Here’s a screen shot from our broadcast yesterday:

Periscope Monetizes

You can see the message from Periscope that our friend @redefiningrich1 whom we call “Suzi Q” gave us a “super heart” and you can actually see that the super heart is extra sparkly to the right.  As a side note – the compliment to Ally on the screen is a funny auto response from the “Eggbot” from eggdrp.com.  There are three levels of super hearts – they increase in value and animation effect on the screen.  They then are tallied as “stars” and once you receive 185,000 total super hearts / stars you can apply with Periscope to be a super scoper of sorts and get payouts on the hearts monetarily.  I know, it’s a little confusing but it does make sense after a bit.

A couple quick thoughts on Periscope Super Hearts:
  • Our stance on this has always been that if people want to donate or tip we would accept it if Periscope made that an option on the app.  We aren’t going to call a ton of attention to it and we certainly aren’t going to make anyone feel like we require it or expect them to do it in order to be in our broadcasts or a part of our community.  We do certainly appreciate it and we don’t take it lightly that people find value in what we do on our broadcasts.
  • One major flaw we see in the rollout of Super Hearts is that not everyone receiving them will reach 185,000 stars anytime soon, and even those who do aren’t guaranteed to be approved to receive any payout, so people may be purchasing the coins to donate the super hearts to scopers who may never be able to redeem them.  Periscope will get that money.  Now I want Periscope to make money – I’m fine with that – the platform should make money.  Could you make the case that there is nothing wrong with the app making money by being available to bring you the specific content you like and donate to?  Well yeah, but without the scoper getting a piece and without you knowing if the scoper will ever get a piece?  I don’t know….  I think they should address this somehow.
  • To be continued…..

A Couple Of Thoughts on other platforms while we’re at it…

LinkedIn has legs….

Another platform I’ve spent more time on in the last year or so than ever before is LinkedIn.  I’m no expert there either but one thing I’m noticing is that posts there can have an extended life that I don’t see on some of the others.  I’m finding that a good random post continues to get discovered for weeks on LinkedIn if it’s getting likes.  I posted a good one two weeks ago that has been getting steady likes and views and it even seems to be picking up pace.  That doesn’t happen on Facebook or Twitter.  At least not without shares or retweets.  I suppose it happens on Twitter on a popular tweet with a relevant hashtag and enough activity (maybe even on Instagram to a lesser degree with hashtags).  But I think the difference here is that the post seems to be getting discovered in feeds without any hashtags.  The activity and the views seem to be keeping it afloat so to speak.  I don’t know a ton about LinkedIn algorithms but I think this example is noteworthy.  Same thing when you write an article on LinkedIn – I’ve had articles picked up by LinkedIn Pulse that get views for over a year to the point where I went in and updated them so they were still accurate because people were still reading them.

As for the recent post that is getting views from a couple weeks ago…

Periscope Monetizes

25 likes is more than I normally get and it’s been a steady rate of 1-2 per day for two weeks now, and 2310 views is a lot for me for a random post.  It clearly crossed some threshold – there haven’t been any shares and I only have 778 followers there.  Meanwhile – take the advice in the post PLEASE!  The Bitmoji I used is a full “Bye Felicia” even though it’s cutoff above.  Haha… 

Here’s a little further breakdown of who is seeing the post from the analytics:

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Views from all over the country – various level employees and various companies.  Pretty cool!

A Little Annoyed With Snapchat… But Geofilters Still Rock

Maybe we’re an exception in this case but as a small biz that mainly consists of Ally and me, it made sense to link my Bitmoji to our Snapchat profile.  I man the Snapchat so once in a while I could add my Bitmoji to a snap, or use it in chats with our connections and our high school seniors – it’s fun!  Even better, I could screen grab dual bitmojis of me and Ally from the chat and we’ve had a blast with those.  Take this instagram for example with Ally and I flying in huge paper airplane!  Lol…

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But here’s the problem and the recent decision by Snapchat which I find to be absolutely ridiculous…  They changed everyone’s profile pic in their snapcode to their default Bitmoji if it’s linked with NO OPTION to use anything else.  Like so:

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Now before you start with the wisecracks, I don’t WANT to be the face of Frameable Faces.  I don’t even usually like both Ally and me to to be the faces of Frameable Faces!  I usually like the logo for our avatars – or at least a photo of both of us like this:

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I’m not the only one who is mad about this….  nothing like taking away personalization from all of your users eh?  Doesn’t seem to be the smart move when you’re locked in a battle for survival with a hostile Instagram.

On a positive Snapchat note, geofilters still rock for small brands.  Here is one of our senior spokesmodels Lauren using one we placed at her high school on the last day of school:

Periscope MonetizesRandom Twitter thoughts:

Why would you pay someone to show you how to get “15,000 new twitter followers” who has 2387 themselves?  You wouldn’t.  Why would you want “15,000 new twitter followers”?  You wouldn’t.  Make connections people – not just numbers.  This garbage and this approach by many so-called “gurus” is prevalent…

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Wait a sec – What About Facebook…?

Wait!  No tips or ranting on or about Facebook in this post?  WHAT?  That’s weird….    well that’s okay I guess.

Oh wait yes – I almost forgot just a little thing I picked up that you may know already, but when you upload a native video to Facebook (which is a good idea for better presentation and reach on Facebook as opposed to a link to a YouTube video) you should consider offering captioning – like the closed captioning you see on TV.  Some people may catch a video in their FB feed without clicking on it and pulling the audio.  They can still follow a bit with the captioning which is pretty slick and easy to implement on Facebook.  Here’s a screen shot for one I added the captioning to for our client Mark Mandell, Attorney At Law (the link is to his YouTube page by the way – please subscribe if you’re interested).Periscope Monetizes

Note the text at the bottom that has been pulled right from the audio by Facebook.  It’s pretty spot on but you can edit any words that are incorrect.

You can find the option to add captions in the “edit video” menu shown below – you just click the “Generate” button under the “Captions” tab to get started:

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Thoughts?

That’s all for now.  What are your thoughts?  Do you have tips of your own?  I hope you enjoyed this – I want your feedback – please share and comment!

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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?
**********************************************
Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World!  Click here!

Double Trouble? Double FUN! Meet Harrison and Henry!

I got a phone call from Carlos looking to set up a photo session on pretty short notice…..for his twin one month old boys!  I knew Ally would be pretty excited since we’ve had plenty of babies in the studio and plenty of twins, but no twin babies!  We had time available the following day which was exactly 30 days from Harrison and Henry’s birth so it seemed like the planets were aligning!  And what a session!  Are twin boys double trouble to photograph?  HECK NO – they’re double FUN!!!

Double Fun with Harrison and Henry!

Carlos and Gina came to the studio well prepared with some monogrammed burp cloths for the boys which we’ll get to.  In the meantime for one month old babies it’s hit or miss on how easy it will be to get them to sleep which always makes for easier posing and photographing.  So with twins this was somewhat unchartered territory!  Indeed, they were not ready to nap when they got here so we had to wait it out a bit….  a little classical music, some low light, some high heat and an hour or two of patience and we were in business!!!  We always block off two hours but allow for cushion on the back end with little babies just in case we need the extra time.  So without further adieu, let’s meet the boys!

We’ll start with the individual shots – first of Henry:

Double Fun

How great is he?

And here’s Harrison…

Double Fun

Okay how awesome is the tongue…!

We also have some fun behind the scenes action for you – first with the replay of the Periscope broadcast – you can join in the fun and follow us on Periscope at @frameablefaces at this link, or you can just check out the broadcasts from twitter here.

And here is an amazing shot from that part of the session that will definitely make you smile….

Double Fun

Caption that one however you like.  🙂

We have one more broadcast replay this time from Facebook Live and this one was shared and liked quite a bit…

We’ll leave you with one more photo from the session with the monogrammed burp cloths from the Facebook broadcast:

Double Fun

Double fun indeed!!!!  Double adorable, double delicious – the list goes on and we hope you enjoyed the highlights of our day with Harrison and Henry!

Equipment used:

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

**********************************************
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!