Author Archives: Doug Cohen

The Thrill Of The Chase – And His Spokesmodeling Session!

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How’s that for a little play on words?  We are indeed thrilled for this Chase to represent our studio as a spokesmodel for the class of 2016.  Ally has known Chase’s mom going back to high school which always makes it nice too.  Chase seems like a really good kid and he’s an enterprising young man already with a business with a couple friends – PWR Detroit!  Check out the website and their bracelets made from beads from around the globe, and you’ll notice Chase wearing them in the pictures below.  Speaking of pictures let’s take a look at some from his awesome session shall we?

We started out on location or should I say we “false started”…  I left Reflecto (our snarky location reflector) at the studio in the other car so we had to run back for “him”.  Of course he tweeted about it…  Plus it was my fault and Ally could have easily thrown me under the bus but she didn’t.

Thrill Of The Chase

To Heritage Park we go…

Okay let’s try that again.  First we went on location to Heritage Park in Farmington Hills – one of our favorite spots.  There was a new structure there that immediately caught our eye.

Thrill Of The Chase

Pretty cool right?  Next we hit the stone wall which is one of our go-to spots.  Chase was great to work with and here he’s showing off the PWR Detroit gear and bracelets!

Thrill Of The Chase

Our last shot on location was on a little viewing platform at the end of a trail that we like.  There is much to discover at Heritage Park!

Thrill Of The Chase

Let’s now take a look at our behind the scenes vine of the day before we head back to the studio for one more:

Okay now back to the studio for this one on the grey:

Thrill Of The Chase

And that’ll do it for now with Chase.  We hope you enjoyed these highlights from our day with him!

Jesse’s March Madness Was Truly A Blast!

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March Madness usually means a basketball tournament, but in this case it meant Jesse’s Bar Mitzvah!  Since we started photographing events with our fabulous event photographer Angela, Ally and I have attended a couple of them as guests which is a special treat for us on a couple levels.  For starters it’s special to share in a celebration with our friends, but to watch Angela at her craft is very rewarding as well because it confirms for us why we are so proud to have her.  We knew we had something special with her from the first day she walked into our studio when she was still a photography student several years ago.  She’s grown into a true pro and we are excited to showcase some of her work here!

Let’s start on the bimah

We have known Jesse since he was born and I have known his parents Noah and Ellen for 23 years going back to our days at the University of Michigan.  They are a great family and you can see the joy they had on the occasion of Jesse’s Bar Mitzvah!  First Angela focused on the service part of the event at the Temple with photos of the family in the sanctuary:

March Madness

March Madness

March Madness

March Madness

Now let the “March Madness” begin!

The theme of the party was #JessesMarchMadness and people were having fun Instagramming with the hashtag which was displayed on the big screen, but when Jesse led members of the U of M marching band into the room and a rousing chorus of “The Victors” was played, well – things got kicked up a notch for sure.  Jesse wore a GoPro to record the party and it was definitely a day to remember!

March Madness

March MadnessHail to Jesse (and The Victors)!!!

March Madness

March Madness

March Madness

March Madness

We hope you enjoyed these highlights of Jesse’s March Madness – his Bar Mitzvah was truly a special day!

Meet The Great Gabby – Our New Class Of 2016 Spokesmodel!

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Time to present another North Farmington Raider spokesmodel for the class of 2016 – The Great Gabby!!!  She’s not just “great” in general, but she’s cute, nice, smart and fun and this is not the first time she has been in front of Ally’s camera, as she made a little cameo in her sister Rachel’s senior pictures a year ago.

First in the studio…

So we started in the studio with Gabby and while we did some of our favorite shots on the black background we also broke out our metallic silver and our new grey fabric and played with those a little.  Let’s start with the grey and the red couch for this fun and playful shot:

Great Gabby

Nice!  Gabby has such a fantastic smile!  Okay now let’s move to the metal for this next one.  These are actual metal panels that we shoot in the studio and several seniors select this look each year – not a ton but definitely a few every year and we love it.  I’m going to take just a little credit on this one only because I saw this as a black and white with a close crop when Ally and I were going through them…  Yes I do have a bit of an eye sometimes – ha!

Great Gabby

What do you think?  And yes I think Gabby killed it here as her shirt would suggest…  I love this shot.

Heading outside…

Next it was time to head outside and our weather cooperated nicely for these next couple photos.

Great Gabby

As you can see so far Gabby can pull off the serious and thoughtful pose just as well as the happy smiley pose – she is the Great Gabby!  Let’s take a look at our fun behind the scenes vine of our day before we finish with a fun smile:

And the final smile before we go…

Great Gabby

It’s a winner!  Love having Gabby back especially as a spokesmodel representing our studio for the senior class of 2016!  We hope you enjoyed these highlights from her session!

 

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!

It’s The Frameable Faces 2015 Campus Tour!

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Every now and then you need to go back to school right?  Well that’s just what we did with the Frameable Faces 2015 Campus Tour!  This year’s tour included stops in Ann Arbor and East Lansing and we had a blast hanging out with some of our favorite former seniors!  High School senior pictures are so fun for us and we get pretty close to many of our seniors so it’s really special for us to be able to visit them up at college!

First Stop – Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan Wolverines!!!

We made Ann Arbor our first stop where we met at Pizza House just like the 2013 tour, where we hung out, ate some yummy pizza and garlic bread.  Nicole Davidson (Frameable Faces class of 2011), Jarred Bratley and Cheyenne Stone (FF class of 2012), and Mara Cranis and Alanah Bratley (FF class of 2014) all met us and we caught up for a while.

2015 Campus Tour

2015 Campus Tour

Afterwards it was time to get over to Insomnia Cookies for a little dessert – YUM!

2015 Campus Tour

All in all a great day!  GO BLUE!

Next Stop – East Lansing and the Michigan State Spartans!!!

Our next stop was a dicey proposition because we planned it for a Sunday evening on the weekend of the Elite 8 and if the Spartans won on Friday they would be playing on Sunday – we just didn’t know when.  As it turned out they won and were scheduled to play on Sunday at 2, so when we rolled into town for dinner at El Azteco, the campus was buzzing since the Spartans had just punched their ticket to the Final Four.  Chelsea Cage (FF class of 2011) and Bri Dines (FF class of 2013) met us for a topopo salad feast – just like we did on the 2013 tour.

2015 Campus Tour

2015 Campus Tour

This time around we decided to change it up a bit for dessert though and go to the MSU Dairy Store for ice cream.  They have flavors in honor of the different Big Ten schools, so I got a scoop of Maize-N-Berry on top of a scoop of Buckeye Blitz.  Ha!  Delish!

2015 Campus Tour

2015 Campus Tour

Always remember if you’re the one taking the group selfie to cut off half of your face like our daughter Lacey did above – it’s a thing…  No really – it is.

One last point to make here – we are so proud of Nicole and Chelsea – the two seniors in the group.  Nicole is graduating from U of M and is continuing on to med school, and Chelsea is graduating from MSU and has been hired by General Motors!  So there it is – the 2015 Frameable Faces Campus Tour – one of our favorite things to do!

Keyaira Was Killin’ It On Her Photo Shoot!

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Keyaira was killin’ it indeed on her high school senior session and we are excited to show these photos!  We have some wonderful Spring seniors coming in from the soon-to-be-graduating class of 2015 and Keyaira and her mom Nichole were absolutely delightful, and before we get to her pictures I have to share this little side story because it’s just so typical of how we roll here and what makes it fun to meet and get to know our clients…

We met with Keyaira and Nichole on March 14th for their consultation which we do with all of our seniors – it’s really important for us to get to know our seniors ahead of time and plan their session with them so we can capture who they really are.  It’s not uncommon for the conversation to turn to food either especially if we discover any sort of ethnic background in their history.  Everybody is from somewhere but when it comes to food we’ve had Peruvian and Indian clients help us discover some amazing cuisine for example (there is another blog post coming about all of this by the way), and in Keyaira’s case there is some Mexican background among others in the family.  We thought we had our fave Mexican joint nailed down already in Taqueria San Jose in Waterford, but they told us about Jalapeńos in Pontiac and we ended up eating there twice by the time we saw them again only 10 days later at Keyaira’s session on the 24th!  YUM!!!

Okay, now that we’ve covered taste, let’s get to sight!  Keyaira’s session!

Keyaira

As I mentioned in the last couple posts we had a couple seniors coming up that would be all indoors and all outdoors.  Keyaira had a beautiful sunny day for her outdoor session and she looked fantastic!

Keyaira

Okay, we love the above photo – Keyaira looks relaxed, the backlight and breeze on her hair is great and she her smile is beautiful!

Here is the fun behind the scenes vine of our day:

Next it was time to get some city shots…

Keyaira

Love that color on her!  Let’s look at one more…

Keyaira

You would have to agree that Keyaira was killin’ it right?  She sure was.  We hope you enjoyed these highlights of her session!

 

Tori Had A “Purple Reign” On Her Senior Session!

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A high school senior who goes retro on the music for their session is a senior after our own hearts, and when Tori told us she liked Prince we were excited – we love jamming to Prince!  Besides Prince goes with purple which we already had in the game plan with our new purple backdrop.  Plus Tori’s school colors include purple and she really owned her session, so yeah – you could say Tori had a Purple Reign!

Tori came in with her mom and both of them are so nice – not to mention her grandma stopped by as well!  We were actually impressed with Tori from our first meeting when she told us her plans for college and postgraduate study – she’s a girl on a mission and she has a great game plan.

So let’s get to her pictures shall we?  We started out on the white background with Tori in her cheer uniform – love this!  Blackhawk spirit!

Purple Reign

Next let’s get to a couple on the black backdrop – love the ‘tude in these next couple photos starting with the hoodie.  A little “fierce” and a lot beautiful – so cool!

Purple Reign

I mentioned in the last blog post that the next two sessions will be one all indoors and one all outdoors.  An all studio or all location session is a nice change of pace and allows us as in this case with Tori to fully explore our studio options.  As I said earlier Tori owned this session and she really had it going at this point…

Purple Reign

Here’s our fun behind the scenes vine of the session…

Lastly we moved to the purple backdrop which we are really in love with and it really worked for Tori as you will see in this last photo!

Purple Reign

And that concludes our highlights of Tori’s purple reign!  We hope you enjoyed them!

Spokesmodeling Outside Was So Great With Cait(lin)!

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After another brutally cold winter we are finally able to get outside for some sessions and it feels so good!!! While it was still a little chilly the conditions were still pretty darn good on this one and we have to say that spokesmodeling outside was SO great with Caitlin!!!  We saw a bunch of deer and were treated to the sounds of a particularly industrious woodpecker too!

As for our spokesmodel, well the pictures will speak for themselves!  Caitlin is beautiful and a total sweetheart!  A total natural in front of the camera, we were looking forward to photographing her and this session didn’t disappoint.

Let’s start with a couple of studio shots before we head out to one of our favorite meadows, beginning with our black background:

Spokesmodeling OutsideWe love Caitlin’s style – so far the class of 2016 is really bringing it!

Next let’s look at one on the white background which is nice and simple and you can never go wrong with it.  As excited as we were to go outside, more often than not our seniors do a combination of studio and on location so we usually highlight both with our spokesmodels wherever possible.  It’s not a rule by any means – we’ve had seniors who have done all inside or all outside.  Either way we go for three hours and it’s really just personal preference.

Spokesmodeling Outside

Here is our fun behind the scenes vine as we get set to go outside!

First we hit the meadow and we were pleased to find it looking particularly “meadowy” with tall reeds and the sunlight was great!

Spokesmodeling Outside

The combination of her outfit with those shoes is fantastic!  The backlight on her hair is beautiful and this was the first time we took this chair outside.  This shot just came together perfectly.

You may know if you’ve followed us for a while that sometimes if a senior uses a new prop or pioneers a new spot it gets named for them.  On this session we found “Caitlin’s rock”!  This is a nice shot to end with for now – hazy and soft.

Spokesmodeling Outside

So that’s it for now – we hope you enjoyed these highlights from Caitlin’s stunning session and we are looking forward to more outdoor shots as it continues to warm up and Spring starts to bloom.  Ironically we have two class of 2015 senior sessions to highlight coming up – one all indoors and one all outdoors – so stay tuned!

Two Little Rock Star Brothers (and their mommy)!

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

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

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

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

Rock Star Brothers

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

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

Rock Star Brothers

Love it.

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

Rock Star Brothers

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

We A-Love-A Atara – Our Newest Spokesmodel!

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Yes we “a-love-a” Atara – our newest spokesmodel!  We have known her and her family for years but we hadn’t spent a ton of time with Atara in the past.  We always knew she was a sweetheart but having her represent us for the upcoming class of 2016 has allowed us to get to know her better and she is awesome.  This spokesmodel session was a bit of a family affair since at one point or another both of her brothers and parents popped in for a bit here at the studio and we had much fun.  Atara is extremely photogenic and talk about a virtuoso performance….!!!

We broke out the damask backdrop first which has been a favorite over the years for this shot, and we also added a new hair light this year which we used for the first time in this session and we are loving the results!

Atara

Pretty in pink right?  Here would be a good time to give a shout out to Shifra Raskin down the hall from our studio for the makeup.  Shifra does a great job and in this case we think she had a pretty good “canvas” to work with!

Next we broke out our brand new purple backdrop and we love the way Atara looks in front of it, especially with the red dress.

Atara

While we’re at it let’s take a sec to look at our fun behind the scenes vine from the shoot!

Next let’s take a look at the red backdrop that you see in the vine which we are always fans of:

Atara

Lastly we did some black and blowy with Atara and this is the first one of these we have posted for the class of 2016.  OMG…

Atara

Incredible!

And so there it is – you can see why we a-love-a Atara so much!  The class of 2016 spokesmodels are really bringing it and we are having a blast with them!  We are so proud to have this wonderful young lady representing Frameable Faces!

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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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