Tag Archives: Vine

An EPIC Detroit Session With Emma At The Dequindre Cut!

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We’ve been saying for a long time that we love Detroit.  And we’ve been saying for a long time that we love Emma.  So the idea of photographing Emma in Detroit seemed like a winner, and when Emma and her mom Teresa suggested heading down to the Dequindre Cut we got excited.  We had read about it and seen a few photos from various Detroit blogs, but I’m here to tell you that it’s really cool having been there now first hand.

Epic Girl…

Emma is one of our spokesmodels for the class of 2016 so you may remember her spokesmodel session with us earlier in the year.  She’s an incredible dancer and a smart and wonderful young lady – we’ve been proud to have her representing us.  We spent this entire morning in Detroit, complete with a stop after at the Bucharest Grill for the best chicken shawarma in town, but I digress… let’s get to the photos!!!

Epic Detroit Session

We’ll start at the Dequindre Cut and we’ll stay there since we never left!  So much to work with… Epic Detroit Session

Love the color coordination here – Emma becomes part of the mural!

As I mentioned the Dequindre Cut is so cool and we were so excited to be down there shooting, so we captured much of our time there with behind the scenes photos and broadcasts on Periscope!  Let’s take a look – first our fun behind the scenes Vine to give you an idea:

Now here is the three part replay of the live broadcasts we did that morning with Emma’s mom Teresa acting as guest host at times!  She was a real trooper on a hot day after just having shoulder surgery!  It goes for about 37 minutes if you’re inclined to watch, or even if you just want to watch some of it!  Download the Periscope app and follow us here, and in the meantime sit back and enjoy…

Okay let’s get back to a few more photos shall we?

Epic Detroit Session

Love it!

Commissioned graffiti and murals all over the place with people jogging, walking, biking…

Epic Detroit Session

More color matching with Emma’s blue going together with the blue behind her!

We’ll leave you with one more of Emma truly reppin’ the D with the Detroit vs. Everybody shirt!

Epic Detroit Session

So there it is – an EPIC Detroit session indeed with one of our all time faves!  We hope you enjoyed the highlights of our morning in the D!!!

 

Jacqueline’s Senior Session Was Jam Packed!

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We love being at the point where we have so many legacies coming to us for senior photos, and this is the second younger sister in a row on the blog!  Jacqueline jumped in some photos with her older sister Melanie last year so we got to know her a little bit and together with mom Andrea we really enjoy these girls!  If you click on the link to Melanie’s session you’ll see that they could be identical twins even though they aren’t!

With Jacqueline we took a slightly different approach than with Melanie, not spending quite as much time in the studio and heading to a different location before ending up at their house like we did last year.  Let’s start with a studio shot on the black background shall we?

Jam Packed

Love it!

Jam Packed…

From here on out it was all location and we jam packed plenty of ground into the rest of the shoot.  Before we get into the location photos let’s take a look at some behind the scenes footage from our day.  First with our fun 6 second vine:

Next we have the replay of our broadcast on Periscope with Melanie guest hosting at one point for her little sister’s session!  So fun – you can download the app and follow us at @frameablefaces here.  Meanwhile here is the broadcast which we posted on our YouTube channel.

Now let’s take a look at our location photos!  Jacqueline looks beautiful in these!

Jam Packed

That’s the shot we spent a good amount of the time getting in the broadcast!

Jam Packed

Love that close crop from the covered bridge at the same location, and let’s look at one more close up back at the house…

Jam Packed

Stunning!  And there you have it – Jacqueline’s jam packed session – jam packed with beauty and awesomeness!  We hope you enjoyed the highlights of our day with her!

Kalin Was Killin’ It On Her Senior Session!

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Kalin killed it on her senior session.  I mean like….slayed it, rocked it, owned it – just think of any verb that’s good and she did it.  And she became one of our favorites from the very moment she walked in for her consultation!  I may say a lot of our seniors are our “favorites” but we just really love them and Kalin has been back to hang out and visit since her session.  We just really connected with her!  She’s personable and funny and we enjoy her a lot!!!

Kalin Was Killin’ It

This session ended up being broken up into two days due to a thunderstorm.  Kalin’s mom Chris came to the session on Thursday and her dad Doug (like that guy – he’s got a good name) met us on location on Saturday as well.  We had a blast!  Let’s take a look at the studio shots first:

Kalin

See what I mean?  Love that one in black and white…

Let’s bring in a little color to the proceedings with Kalin on our purple background:

Kalin

Fun!  Kalin is a sweetheart and it comes through in her smile, and the color of the dress looks great against the purple.

Now let’s take a look at some fun behind the scenes footage from the session before we head to our location.  First with the vine:

Next we have the replay of the live broadcast we did of part of the session on Periscope from our YouTube channel!  You can download Periscope here and follow us at @frameablefaces!  Be forewarned that there is a lot of photography talk with the audience for the studio part of the broadcast while Kalin was doing an outfit change and the connection was jumpy in spots, but it’s still fun.  The location portion of the replay starts at almost the 13 and a half minute mark where Kalin’s mom Chris takes over as guest host for a couple minutes!

Now let’s look at our location shots!  We had great conditions at Quarton Lake in Birmingham two days after our studio time and these two photos are sensational!  First relaxing on a bench…

Kalin

And we’ll leave you with this one amongst the trees…

Kalin

See what we mean?  She killed it which is just slang for she did an awesome job – ha!  We are so happy we met Kalin and we hope you enjoyed the highlights of our day with her!

 

Strike Up The Band For Christian’s Epic Senior Session!

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Strike up the band because we’re about to share an EPIC senior session with Christian!  Christian is a North Farmington Raider just like us so we are always excited to photograph one of “our own”.  What a great family too!  We did some great planning for this one with Christian’s mom, his younger sister helped get him ready the day of the shoot, and his dad came along as well.  Christian’s dad is a veteran so we were honored to have him with us.

Strike up the band (and a match)…

We started the session in the studio where Christian’s family brought in the instruments and a clothing rack so we could get started, and we thought we’d add a little fire to the proceedings right off the bat.  While we used a lighter and not an actual match, match sounded better.  Haha!  Take a look:

Strike Up The Band

Yes that’s real fire – no photoshopped flames here…  don’t believe us?  Take a look at our fun behind the scenes vine of our evening with Christian and see for yourself!!!  🙂

For those who want to see a little more behind the scenes we broadcast a bit of the session on Periscope and here is the replay which includes comments from the viewers.  Download the app and follow us at @frameablefaces!

Epic happens…

Okay so let’s get back to the session and our whirlwind tour of Farmington Hills culminating at Holland Field which you saw in the broadcast.  First we stopped at Heritage Park for a couple shots including this one you saw us doing on the vine with the barn:

Strike Up The Band

Then we made a couple more quick stops including downtown Farmington to get the old Civic marquee in the background – our first time doing this shot and Christian rocked it!

Strike Up The Band

Love the way that one turned out!  And now we’ll leave you with the bleacher shot in full band gear with the use of a little off camera flash and the FJ Westcott Ice Light (or the light saber as we call it)!

Strike Up The Band

Overall an epic night with a great senior and a great family!  We are so glad we got to know Christian and his sister and parents!  We hope you enjoyed the highlights of our night with him!

 

 

Really Great Session, Really Good Time, Really – With Riley!

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Really great sessions are the norm around here with high school seniors.  They’re the norm with everyone else too, but we really do love this time of year when we’re out photographing seniors all the time.  To take that a step further they are really great especially when we have a ton of fun with a “somewhat skeptical” senior.  Let me explain.  Without meaning to embarrass him or anything I don’t know if I can say that Riley was exactly dreaming about his senior session for years or anything like that.  Now that’s not to say he was overtly resistant to being in front of Ally’s camera – he was very pleasant and friendly from the first meeting, I just think he didn’t totally realize how much fun this hangout could be.  And just so you know that is not entirely uncommon!  I’m taking a little liberty here in saying I believe he did have a really good time!

Really Great Session…

Meanwhile Riley’s mom is certainly in the “appearance business” as owner of Aqua Salon two doors down from our studio so she had a new suit ready to go for Riley for the more formal shots and the guy was looking sharp!!!  We started in the studio for some of those photos and Riley did a great job:

Really Great Session

Now that’s a fine looking young man!  We are big fans of the grey backdrop for the formal photos – in this case our grey fabric (as opposed to paper which we also use often).

Let’s take a look at one more in the studio before we head out on location…

Really Great Session

Digging the look on the black.  And now we’ll bring you some behind the scenes of the day first with our fun quick vine as we usually do.

And for those who want to see a little more extended bit behind the scenes here’s a two minute clip from our Periscope live broadcast on our YouTube channel!  Follow us there at @frameablefaces!

Urban Grit and a little History…

Next it was time to head to Pontiac for some city shots.  We love the feel of these location sessions in back alleyways for the gritty urban look.

Really Great Session

The history reference just refers to the deep history conversation I had with Riley on the way home.  Those of you who know me and even from reading this blog have seen how we reference history all the time and you may recall our blog posts where we studied images of American Presidents.  Riley is interested in pursuing political science and he really knows his stuff – I was impressed.  We talked history all the way home.  So we’ll leave you with one more photo for now…

Really Great Session

So there it is – you can see now that Riley’s session was legit – a really great session and we had a good time with him!  Hope you enjoyed the highlights from our day!

What You Need To Know (So Far) About Periscope

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For those of you who don’t follow social media news closely there has been a lot going on in the last couple weeks after what I thought was a relatively quiet period.  Periscope was officially launched for the iPhone and it is going to change the world again in my opinion, much like Facebook, twitter and some of the others have.  As usual things are moving fast and it’s exciting, so here is what you need to know (so far) about Periscope.

Periscope

WHAT IS PERISCOPE?

Periscope is an app that allows you to broadcast live right from your iPhone (Android is coming soon) whenever you like.  Your followers will get a notification that you are “live” on whatever topic you say and they can tune in on the spot.  They can tap on their screen to show their approval with hearts, and make comments which you and the other viewers can see so you can answer questions and respond to the comments.

You may be familiar with Meerkat which launched before Periscope.  Personally I haven’t used Meerkat, but I have read that Periscope’s quality is better and I just don’t think Meerkat will be the winner in this battle, and it IS a battle.  The fact that twitter owns Periscope ensures its success and the integration with twitter makes it easier to set up and use if you are already tweeting.

The possibilities for where this platform will lead us are endless.  I wrote an article recently for MCP Actions where I discussed 5 ways you can use Periscope to help your photography studio – all of the ideas apply to just about any small business in some way.

Meanwhile with the exception of #2 in that article at MCP Actions most of those ideas are for ways to use Periscope as a broadcaster, but even since I wrote that piece I’m seeing new parts of the world and finding inspiration from all over the place as a viewer.

Viewing Adventures On Periscope

I love that throughout my day I can tune in to things that are happening live if I want.  Some of my faves:

  • I participated in a couple more discussions about social media marketing and photography at @RoshSillars who I mentioned in the MCP Actions article.
  • I met a hilarious pug named Rascal who lives in Vancouver and waits obediently for his food before he’s given the green light to dive in with his face deep in the bowl at @MrTommyCampbell.
  • I watched a demo of the Fj Westcott Ice Light (which we affectionately call the “Light Saber” light here at the studio) at a convention at @WestcottCo.
  • I went along on a virtual live tour of a vineyard in Washington State by the Cooper Wine Company at @CooperWine which was pretty neat.

This is all the type of content that was always readily available on the Internet.  That’s not new.  But the fact that it’s spontaneous and happening live on my iPhone where I can chime in and participate?  That IS new, and whether it’s for educational purposes or just fun, I enjoy it.  Now let’s get back to a little more on broadcasting for a minute…

Reusing and repurposing your broadcasts

The ability to reuse and repurpose the broadcasts may ultimately make this my iPhone video cam of choice for our studio and brings another layer to the potential of Periscope.  This will be more effective when landscape mode is available which is coming soon.  Right now the only way to broadcast effectively is portrait mode (vertically) which doesn’t look great in your typical widescreen formats.  But in the meantime it’s nice that you can easily download your broadcast as a video to your device with the touch of a button in the app.  We recently broadcasted parts of a high school senior spokesmodel session and we had viewers from Italy, Great Britain, and Paris.  I downloaded the broadcast to use parts of it for a Vine since it’s easy to grab portrait footage in the square frame of Vine and crop it effectively.  What was interesting was that the footage was raw – with no hearts or comments.  So keep in mind you can make your broadcast available for replay for 24 hours with all the elements of the original broadcast (comments, hearts etc.) intact, but when you download it to your iPhone those elements are stripped away.  This is different than Snapchat which keeps any added text or other animation in the video if you download it to your device.  Here is the Vine I mentioned – the indoor part on the red background was pulled from our broadcast…

As I’ve mentioned, Periscope is coming to Android soon and landscape interface for broadcasts are also coming.  Here is an article that outlines the changes they’ve made already with version 1.0.2 and previews what is to come.

I hope this helps!  Feedback is welcome and remember to download the app (it’s FREE) and follow us at @frameablefaces on Periscope!

Doug’s Rant – Why Is Social Media “So Quiet”?

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So quiet

Why is social media so quiet lately?  It just doesn’t seem to me that there has been a lot going on.  Let me explain.  For a few solid years there it seemed like it was the “golden age” of major platforms – such as:

  • Facebook Pages switched over to “likes” from fans in April 2010 a month after we set up the Frameable Faces page.
  • Instagram launched on October 6th, 2010 and we joined it in May of 2012.
  • Pinterest launched in April of 2010
  • Snapchat launched in September of 2011 (more on that in a minute).
  • Google Plus pages for businesses launched in October of 2011 and they added Google My Business last June.
  • The major Twitter redesign launched in April 2011.
  • Vine launched in January of 2013 and at the time we had to wait until June for Android since T-Mobile didn’t have iPhones yet.

Since then……not a whole lot.

All of those platforms seem to still be thriving and growing as a general rule and it has now been two years by my count since a new “major” platform has made a splash.

Is a lull a good thing?

I can’t decide if I like the fact that it’s been a little quiet or not.  The thought of feeling like I have to manage additional platforms can be stressful especially if we are only adding more and not dropping any, but the rush of starting out on a new one is exciting and a lot of fun.  For example I was pretty excited about Pano Perfect which I thought might be the next big social photo sharing platform but that one has gone nowhere…  I hear people talking about Swipe and sure there are others.  We can debate all day about what a “major” platform is – I am not using any scientific criteria here…  I’m just ranting after all.  Feel free to jump in in the comments and add your two cents.  What do you think is the next big thing?  I want to know.

Meanwhile Snapchat is the one I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.  Of the big ones I listed it’s the one that we don’t have an official Frameable Faces profile for, and after weighing it I don’t know if it’s right for us as a brand at least for the moment.

Edit*** – A Curve Ball

I wrote that last paragraph earlier today and one of our spokesmodels just happened to pop in to the studio and we were chatting about Snapchat since it was on my mind, and I think I just changed my mind again.  She showed me a couple things that convinced me that it could be a good platform for us.  For example I didn’t realize how it notifies you how many people have viewed your snapchat stories and which people viewed them.  So look for it – my wheels are turning now!

So as it turns out I have Snapchat to work on.  I started out wondering why it’s been so quiet in social media, but now that I’ve got another platform to play with I’m hoping things stay quiet for a bit!

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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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Doug’s Rant – Happy Birthday Instagram!

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It’s been a while since I “ranted”.  We have had a very busy summer photographing seniors and planning and celebrating our son’s bar mitzvah so all I have been really able to think about for blogging is keeping up with sharing our wonderful seniors of the class of 2015.  There are plenty of seniors to come as we are just getting started with a whole new round of “fall color” seniors, and we will also be sharing some bar mitzvah photos too.  However I saw yesterday that it was Instagram’s 4th birthday and decided I need to comment (maybe not rant) on it and say Happy Birthday Instagram!

Happy Birthday Instagram

Yes – that was our very first Instagram 119 weeks ago of our exterior sign!  While many of our early Instagrams were not so stellar as we were trying to figure out where it fit for us, I actually still think that was not bad for the first one.

The Frameable Faces Instagram “philosophy”

We have become big fans of Instagram and we use it in a number of ways.  As for the content we typically share, we post pretty much whatever strikes us as fun and valuable to our followers, and we have stayed away from posting videos – we use Vine for short videos.  It’s also important to know the etiquette, such as being careful not to over post.  As for the types of Instagrams we post, the behind-the-scenes collages of photo shoots for example are our favorites.  It allows us to share a snapshot of our time spent with our peeps very quickly.

Happy Birthday Instagram

We started focusing on those because we weren’t sure that Instagram was the best platform to showcase our final images since people mostly look at them on such a small screen.  Our work is best displayed as a 24×30 print or canvas on a wall…right?  Well it turns out that our images look pretty darn good as wall portraits AND as Instagrams…

But here’s the thing.  When we reveal the first sneak peeks here on the blog for a senior session for example, we pick the four we want to showcase and that’s fine – it’s our blog.  But most of our seniors aren’t bloggers – they are Tweeters and Instagrammers.  So for seniors we prefer to make these images available to them first here on the blog with a sampling, and then later in digital watermarked proofs so they can be the ones to share and show off their Frameable Faces pics – it gives them some control and ownership of it, and then we can join in the fun with comments.

Happy Birthday Instagram

Occasionally we’ll post our real work on Throwback Thursday of a senior alum, but we still refrain from posting current final images… at least for now.

Here is how we break down by the numbers:

119 – Weeks on Instagram

2.34 – Average number of Instagrams per week

278 – Total posts

120 – Behind the scenes Instagrams of senior sessions

24 – Selfies

12 – Pics of our peeps on random visits

4 – Instagrams of Reflecto

14 – Instagrams about our home the Orchard Mall

44 – Behind the scenes of family (and a few commercial) sessions

10 – Throwback Thursday seniors

50 – Various other stuff

So there it is!  Happy Birthday to you Instagram!  We hope you enjoyed your day as much as we enjoy you!

Happy Birthday Instagram

Spokesmodeling in the City with Ethan!

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We went spokesmodeling in the city with Ethan since the weather is finally starting to get warmer, and it was so nice to be able to get outside again without trekking through snow and freezing our tails off!  We will have a few more of these outdoor outings to come before we wrap it all up and move into the senior photos for the class of 2015!

We will “get out to the city” in just a minute.  With Ethan we started in the studio on the grey backdrop.Spokesmodeling in the city

We always talk about how dramatic the photos are on the black backdrop, but we think the photos on the grey have a dramatic look to them as well.  We think Ethan shows a relaxed confidence here.

Next it was time to go outside and in this case just like Jubilee’s spokesmodel session we stuck to an urban locale.  We will get back out into nature more as things start to bloom a little.

Spokesmodeling in the city

We like the grit and the grunge – sometimes it makes things a little more interesting.  We had a great time with Ethan and his mom came along for the shoot as well!

Here is a fun behind-the-scenes Vine of the action while we got the studio shot against the grey above as well as the next photo below against the brick wall.

Beauty and the Bees (and some other bugs)!

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Our latest senior session was perfect.  The light was perfect, the weather was perfect, the setting was perfect, and our senior looked stunning!

We started with a little studio work…

High School Senior Picture

We then went on location where as I mentioned everything was perfect….except for the bugs…  and the “threat” of bullfrogs.  This girl does not enjoy bugs or bullfrogs.  The bullfrogs in the area only made themselves known once or twice with a random loud croak or two, but the bees, beetles and one random flying bug decided to get involved in the session.  It all worked out – the beetles on the flower we were using kept to themselves (even though they briefly scared our model), and the bees didn’t sting us or her.  The one random flying bug flew right into her eye at one point but didn’t stay, and for not being a fan of bees she still looks pretty comfortable by the flowers where they were buzzing around!  She’s a real sweetheart with a great sense of style – we laughed a lot and we had a really fun time together!  Love these shots!

High School Senior Photo

We even made a fun vine from the session…  🙂

High School Senior PictureHigh School Senior Picture