Tag Archives: west bloomfield photographer

Class of 2016 Spokesmodels – Off And Running With Rachel!

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Yes it’s that time of the year again when we start preparing for the upcoming class of 2016 senior photo season with highlights of our awesome new spokesmodels!  This is always a very exciting time for us as we enter into these new relationships with these impressive young future leaders as they inspire us and make us laugh.  Making new friends is the best part of what we do and our new roster is shaping up to be another wonderful crew.  While this winter may not be quite as brutal as last year’s was, it’s been pretty cold lately so we’ll probably be starting off with a lot of studio work which is fine since we had to replace some backdrops that we lost in the “great Frameable Faces flood of 2015”.

Meanwhile Rachel is the first spokesmodel we would like to share photos of with you and the only one we photographed before the flood hit us.  She’s a West Bloomfield Laker and she’s great – she’s a dancer, she’s on the pom team and she’s just a cool girl all around.  We’re happy to kick it off with her, so without further adieu here we go – off and running with Rachel for 2016!

First we started with our black background which we played around with a bit – the blowy, a couple outfits and we’re going to start off with this soft black and white shot with this cute headband. Running With RachelRachel looked great and with her we focused mainly on just her – simple, solid colors, a variety of outfits and Rachel’s smile.  Now would probably be a good time for a shout out to Gloria at The Beauty Lounge for the makeup!  Let’s look at the brown background next:

Running With Rachel

This is a great combo for her skin tone, hair and the maroon and beige colors.  As we did last year we are continuing with our fun behind the scenes vines of our sessions and here is Rachel’s:

Let’s move to the blue that you see in the vine next… the different colors seem to bring out different shades of color in her beautiful eyes!

Running With Rachel

And lastly we broke out the red and we love the way Rachel was engaging with the camera at this point in the session – really owning it!

Running With Rachel

So there it is, and yes we’re off and running with a new class of spokesmodels – off and running with Rachel!  Stay tuned as we introduce you to the rest of our crew one by one over the next couple of months as we lead into the new senior class!

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

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

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

One Year Old Superstar

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

One Year Old Superstar

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

One Year Old Superstar

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

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

One Year Old Superstar

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

Our New Neighbors Across The Hall – Cycle And Row!

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There is going to be some sweating, working, cycling, and rowing going on across the hall really soon, and we are so excited about it!  Recently we had a fun photo session here at the studio with our new neighbors – the folks from Cycle And Row!  We had a photo session for their new website and we wanted to share a few of the photos with you!

Karen and Samantha are a mother and daughter team who came up with the Cycle And Row concept together and along with Karen’s husband Paul and Samantha’s fiancé Jeff they are pursuing their dream together starting right here in the Orchard Mall!  Let’s start with a group shot!

New Neighbors

Their website is already up and their schedule is available with class starting on 2/12/15 so you should check it out and sign up.  Cycle and Row is split into two main rooms with rowing on one side and cycling on the other and they have an enthusiastic crew of instructors who we also photographed.  You can meet and read about them all at the website.  As for these four, well as you can imagine they just light up if you ask them about fitness and what Cycle And Row has to offer, which is actually more than just just cycling and rowing.  I won’t try to explain it all in this post, but suffice it to say I was really impressed with their approach.

Meanwhile we had a blast on the photo shoot…  They hauled the equipment into our studio and we got some fun action shots!  Here is the fun behind the scenes vine of our session…  🙂

Now let’s take a look at a photo of mom and daughter…

New Neighbors

And one of daughter Sam and fiancé Jeff…

New Neighbors

They’re a cute pair aren’t they?  Now let’s wrap it up with one more of the whole crew…

New Neighbors

We wish them the best of luck and much success and we welcome them to the Orchard Mall!  As I mentioned before check out their website, and like them on Facebook, and follow them on Instagram and Twitter too.  We are excited for our new neighbors!

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

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

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

Perfect Puzzle

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

Perfect Puzzle

Followed by Paige and her guy and gal!

Perfect Puzzle

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

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

Perfect Puzzle

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

Some Brotherly Love and Some Birthday Cake!

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Some brotherly love, some birthday cake and some general yumminess on multiple levels happened here at the studio when these two showed up that’s for sure.  What great kids!  The age gap between these two brothers was enough that having big brother here was basically like having an assistant for little brother’s first birthday photos.  A first birthday is always a great occasion for a photo shoot and a little birthday cake too, but we’ll get to the cake in a bit.

For now let’s focus in closely on these two by themselves.  They came in with their mom who is a doll and they both totally nailed the poses and the smiles – total pros!  Let’s start with our one year old.

Brotherly Love

How cute is he?  And such a great disposition – on him and his awesome older brother…

Brotherly Love

We love these two shots in black and white – they just go together nicely.  These two were having fun (as were we) as you can see in our behind the scenes vine of the morning:

We love this next photo of the birthday boy expressing how big he is!  Soooo big!

Brotherly Love

Then it was time to break out the birthday cake.  Sometimes our one year olds need a minute to process that this big cake is sitting in front of them for them to dive into all by themselves, so big brother jumped in to provide a little help.  As I mentioned before he was great – he just knew what to do and he really loves his little brother!

Brotherly Love

Just love that last shot – the interaction is priceless!  So there it is – a little bit of brotherly love and some birthday cake for you all!  We hope you enjoyed these highlights!  We certainly enjoyed being with these guys!

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

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

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

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

Fun smiles and love

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

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

Fun smiles and love

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

Fun Smiles and Love

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

We Heart This Little Guy And His Parents!

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

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

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

We Heart This Little Guy

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

We Heart This Little Guy

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

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

We Heart This Little Guy

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

So Fun Getting Krazy with The Kamen Family!

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

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

Getting Krazy

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

Getting Krazy

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

Getting Krazy

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

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

Getting Krazy

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

2014 Was A Wonderful and Frameable Year!

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

The Class of 2015 Spokesmodels

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

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

2014

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

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

Tony’s Bar Mitzvah!

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

 

2014New Website, other highlights and cruising towards 2015!

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

2014

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

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

All our best,

Doug and Ally