Author Archives: Doug Cohen

Beauty and the Bees (and some other bugs)!

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

Fun, Fire, Flash and a Little Football!

Every senior session has a story…

For this session we tested out a new light for an idea we had for a night time shoot.  We ended up getting the shot but we almost didn’t.  We needed bleachers at the end of the session and we struck out on the first two high school stadiums we went to.  At the first one the lot was being resurfaced and it would have been next to impossible to get our equipment to the stadium, the second one was in use by the football team there under the lights, and the third……  was locked, and it was getting late.  Luck finally turned our way when we discovered that the second entrance was unlocked and we were in!  It was totally worth it…. here is the shot:

High School Senior

As for the rest of the session this senior totally rocked it and we had a great time!  Great kid, great family, spectacular pictures.  He is definitely the kind of guy you would want on your team!  Enjoy!

Senior PictureSenior PicturesSenior PictureSenior Pictures

Doug’s Rant – More on Buying LOCAL! – August 2, 2013

I have written plenty about buying local before but something happened today that made me want to revisit it…  This is a single-topic rant.

Buy Local

A silly story

We source most of our products and services from local businesses, and we always look local first, but once in a while there is a product we need that we get from a bigger company out of state.  I’m not going to name names but this particular vendor based 4 states away just sent us a paper statement with a zero balance.  With a return envelope.  In an envelope.  Is this silly or what?  Keep in mind that every statement we get from this company will always be a zero balance because we pay at the time we order.  Okay fine, so I called them to see if they can just email them to us in the future to avoid the waste and the cost and I was told they do not have the capability to not send those statements.

They literally just told me that they are not able to stop themselves from wasting money and resources.

They have a “system update coming at some point” that may allow them that capability but for now they will continue to spit out empty mountains of paper and mail them across the country for no good reason.  So the lesson here is wherever it’s practical – BUY LOCAL!!!  Generally speaking it seems the bigger the company the more red tape there is, the more politics, waste, and fat – sometimes big corporations just can’t seem to get out of their own way.  Granted this isn’t true of all big corporations, but small independents usually don’t have big automated systems – they typically have real people pouring their personal passion, blood, sweat and tears into their livelihood, and they will give you fewer counterintuitive answers like the one I got today.

Reality check – Local doesn’t get you everything…

Now listen, I understand you can’t buy everything local.  You can’t get a Joe Phone from JoeComm on the corner and get a signal from Joe’s towers…  you have to get service from a national or regional carrier.  I’m not going to say I never shop at Target or Costco – I do.  I don’t know any neighbors with their own oil company and refinery who can sell me gas.  But if there is a choice and you have the practical option of buying local (or eating at a locally owned restaurant) you should consider it where possible.

Keep the money here

Sure I have a stake in this subject since Frameable Faces is a local independent studio, so I am biased.  But keep in mind that as a rule, by buying local you are keeping more money in your local community which helps your local economy, and we Detroiters / Metro Detroiters know a thing or two about the importance of that – especially now with our city in bankruptcy.

You don’t have to agree with me, but at least you know where I stand!  🙂

What Would You Do With More Free Time?

This is a post about life, work, kids, balance…

What Would You Do With More Free Time?

Our kids are at camp for a total of 3 1/2 weeks and they have two more weeks there before they come home.  When we tell people this they say “Wow!”, “Party Time for you two!”, “It’s like a vacation!”, “Are you going anywhere?”, and “What are you going to do?”

Yes it’s like a vacation in a sense even though we are not taking any trips.  When the kids are at camp it means more free time – you don’t have to drive them anywhere or pick them up.  You can’t spend time with them because they’re away.  We don’t have to worry about planning or making meals for them.  So yes we have free time but that hardly means we are kicking back and laying by the pool for a month…  Here are some of the things we are doing while our children are away:

  • We are missing them
  • We are enjoying the time alone
  • We are launching a canvas business for other studios with the local folks who have printed our canvas for our clients for the past 4 years and we’ve used some of the time by working hard on this.  We are excited about it and there will be more to come on this topic!  If you are a professional photographer please give us a try.  The quality is top notch as our clients know.
  • We are meandering and browsing at the library and the bookstore – and we are taking our time when we do
  • We are going out with friends
  • We are staying in and reading books, watching movies, sleeping in occasionally
  • We are meeting with a bunch of seniors and scheduling senior sessions – can’t wait for the class of 2014 – new senior frameables will be gracing this blog soon!
  • We are strolling around Royal Oak and Birmingham
  • We are spreading the word about our leap into events with our second photographer Angela Bell
  • We are working hard
  • We are loving work
  • Ally is working on the photography lessons she is offering
  • We planned a little impromptu 25th high school reunion for Doug’s graduating class
  • We are taking stock – of lots of things
  • We are going to Eastern Market and Ann Arbor
  • We’ve had a drink or two
  • We are exercising
  • ….and we are missing our kids.

What would you do with some extra free time?

Doug’s Rant – Facebook Comment Photos, Events! and Glipho – July 20, 2013

It’s that time again….  🙂

Rant

Several topics to discuss this time out – please share and give feedback in the comments!

Facebook Makes a Cool Change

Facebook adds photo comments

I discovered this little tidbit on allfacebook.com and I think it could have some pretty big implications for how brands interact with their followers on facebook.  I think the fact that people can join in conversations on a facebook page with photo attachments is very cool.  As you can tell in the above photo by my little avatar I’m logged in as Doug Cohen, I’ve clicked on a photo on Leaf & Berry’s page that we took, and I can include a photo with my comment if I want.  We embrace the popularity of photography at all levels and this could bring new opportunities for our peeps to participate in fun and creative ways by attaching their photos.  Our wheels are turning… stay tuned and let us know how you have seen this used and what ideas you have.

An About Face… To Event Photography!

As you may know in the past if you asked us if we photograph events our answer would be “no” with a few exceptions.  Well that has changed…  Ally and I are still not personally looking to be event photographers – we have our obligations as parents on the weekends for starters.  However, our fantastic second photographer Angela Bell has proven to be fabulous with events!  We tested her out on some informal affairs such as out-of-towner dinners and engagement parties and she did really well.  Then she stepped up to a couple bar/bat mitzvahs and she really blew us away!  More on this to come but suffice it to say Frameable Faces is indeed now in the event business and we are excited!

Glipho – Another Cool Social Network

I signed up for a Glipho account and you can follow me here.  What is Glipho you ask?  It’s a social blogging site – a cool way to pull content in from multiple platforms (instagram, twitter, blogger, WordPress etc.) into a very simple blog interface.  You can blog on Glipho, make friends, follow and like other blogs and interact with people.  I’ve chosen to use it as an outlet for myself as me – Doug, as opposed to another branded Frameable Faces page.  Yes I will be posting some FF blog posts there and hopefully bringing more attention and readers back to this blog, but I like to dabble in other topics like music, food, and football and I guest blog elsewhere so I like the idea of this being an outlet for my “personal brand” so to speak.  Do you “Gliph”?  Let me know if you do!

Quick Hits

  • A photo definitely made huge news this week with Rolling Stone putting a photo of the surviving Boston Marathon bomber on the cover.  Let’s just say this sparked a LOT of controversy and debate as you probably know….
  • Detroit made huge news this week with the bankruptcy announcement – I wrote a love letter to “The D” a while back that warrants a repeat link here….
  • Scott Bourne has written another buying guide – this time for camera lenses.  Anytime he shares this type of info it’s worth bookmarking.

Doug’s Rant – To Vine Is Divine, Web Redditing and Digging – July 11, 2013

Doug droid photoVine and Instagram continue to fascinate me and this is the third rant in a row that I’ve focused on it.  In the last couple of weeks I’ve actually become a pretty big fan of Vine and I’ve enjoyed discovering some really creative and funny Vines as well as making a few of our own.  Here are a few ways we’ve used Vine so far – a little humor, focusing on our community, and a fun hello to our second photographer Angela:

 

 

 

 

As for Instagram I must say I barely see any videos there… and I prefer Instagram without videos (apparently I’m not the only one).  Being a fan of Vine and not of videos on Instagram is an outcome I did not anticipate, but that’s where I’m at now.

Can you Reddit?  Can you Digg it?

I recently read an article on Smart Savvy Social that discussed 10 ways to promote your blog posts and the major takeaway for me was #8 about bookmarking your blog on various social bookmarking sites.  I had toyed with Stumble a while back but I had never really spent any time on Reddit, Digg, or Technorati, so I went ahead and registered this blog on Technorati, created a profile on Reddit and checked out the others.  I find Reddit to be the most interesting so far because of the community aspect and the points you accumulate for good “karma” in how positive your interactions are.  While I am not seeing a whole lot of discussion about the photography business there, I can at least report that so far Reddit is the one that has generated some traffic back to our blog.  Collectively they seem to be pretty good resources for web surfing and finding good content.

Quick Hits

  • Ally is working on a guest blog about using reflectors for lighting purposes on MCP Actions – be on the lookout for that for you aspiring photographers!  It may be a little while before it posts but we’ll announce it on facebook and twitter for sure…  I also have a couple of articles being published there soon as well.
  • Here’s a case of “don’t just take my word for it” as the ever reliable Rosh Sillars blogs about the 17 things photographers should not do.  I counted and I’ve specifically discussed 8 of them in blog posts and guest blog posts of my own.  Admission – we don’t bother with our tripod very often…  we probably should a little more.  😉
  • By the way I’m a big fan of Snapchat as well which you may have noticed is the app interface on my photo at the top of this rant.  This is another visual and social mobile app but one that I’m not sure lends itself to use as a brand profile so I use it to have fun with my family and friends just as me.  A social media platform I don’t create Frameable Faces content for.

Relay For Life West Bloomfield 2013 – Team Frameable Faces!

This was the first year we entered the Relay For Life West Bloomfield with our own team and we found it to be a very fun and rewarding experience!  For those who don’t know, Relay For Life is a community fundraising event put on through the American Cancer Society to raise money for research to find a cure for cancer.  We had donated in the past and Ally had attended several of the past Relays.  I have to admit that this was my first Relay, and now that I’ve been I don’t plan on missing another one…

Relay For Life West Bloomfield 2013

Photo Credit Hala Eliya Photography

Go Team Frameable Faces!

As pretty much everyone has, we have certainly been touched by cancer in our families and with our friends and so we thought it was time we did something about it – using our brand and our resources to try to raise money to make a world with more birthdays and less cancer, and for our first year I am happy to report we raised almost $1500.  Just so you know you can actually still donate to the cause for this year’s relay through August 31st if you like at our team page.  We had a few partners worth noting who helped us – we did fundraising days at Zoe’s House Of Pancakes and Leaf & Berry, and Hiller’s Markets donated fruit which we made into fruit kebobs and sold at the Team Frameable Faces tent at the Relay.

Disclaimer – the following photos were snapped with a Droid and are of varying quality, but they are included here to tell the story of the day.

We started with a fruit kebob-making party here at the studio Friday night June 7th…

Relay For Life West Bloomfield 2013

Fruit Kebob Party!

Relay For Life West Bloomfield 2013

Joel Ben-Moche cuts up some watermelon! Yum!

 

Then Saturday morning started the Relay with the walk of the survivors…

Relay For Life West Bloomfield 2013

Walk of cancer survivors

We spent the day manning the Frameable Faces tent with our team!

Relay For Life West Bloomfield 2013

Fruit Kebobs!!! Get your fruit kebobs here!!!

Relay For Life West Bloomfield 2013

Frameable Faces Senior Carly Simko shows off her awesome decorations!

Relay For Life West Bloomfield 2013

JC Sidaway sells origami canoes to raise money to fight cancer!

Several dignitaries came to the event including Senator Debbie Stabenow…

Relay For Life West Bloomfield 2013

Senator Stabenow addresses the crowd

Okay this was amazing….  on a day when people spent a lot of time remembering those who lost their battles with cancer an amazing rainbow circle around the sun appeared directly above the event….

Relay For Life West Bloomfield 2013

Incredible

We then decorated luminaria bags in memory of those we’ve lost, and then the entire track was ringed with lit bags at night time while everyone walked a lap in silence.  An extremely touching and powerful moment.

Relay For Life West Bloomfield 2013

Team Frameable Faces luminaria bags

Relay For Life West Bloomfield 2013

Luminaria bags lit with candles

Parting Comments

The Relay is a 24 hour event and Ally and I spent about 17 hours there.  Now that I’ve done it I get how special it is.  I don’t have a good reason why I hadn’t been before.  There was a nice turnout of people, but frankly there weren’t enough.  There is no good reason or excuse for not going to your local Relay For Life.  You don’t have to have the means to donate huge chunks of money in order to attend.  No one will hound you to give.  But you certainly can give, and you can certainly support the cause even if it’s in spirit.  Even if you just come hungry and eat at the Relay – every bit helps.  You will see a ton of people you know and you will feel a really nice sense of community.  As for Team Frameable Faces this year was a good start but we can absolutely do better.  We truly hope you will join us next year as we come together again to CELEBRATE, REMEMBER, and FIGHT BACK!

 

 

 

A Family Finally Completed

The last time we photographed this family they were a family of 4.  Now they’re a family of 5 and what a journey they took to get here.  After a very sad and extremely dangerous episode a few years ago that resulted in the loss of the baby that would have completed their family along with the ability to have any more children, some time passed and they never quite felt like they were complete.  They were happy but something told them they were still meant to be a family of 5 all the same, so first they healed, then they talked, then they dreamed, and then they hoped for the opportunity to adopt and bring another life into their home and their family.

They took the steps needed to adopt and first they looked to Russia.  Plans were made.  A lot of time, effort and emotion was invested into this and they were going to need to take three trips in all to Russia to find and bring home their daughter.  And then…. their hopes were temporarily squashed by Vladimir Putin when he signed an anti-U.S. adoption bill on December 28th, 2012 banning the adoption of Russian children by U.S. families effective January 1, 2013.  Luckily they hadn’t taken the first trip to Russia yet, but this was still a setback to be sure.

So back to the drawing board they went to find a baby girl here in the states, and after 5 anxious months the journey finally led them to Utah where they found their beautiful daughter!  They brought her home to her new and excited siblings and they all came to the studio shortly thereafter.  They are finally complete and we are so happy for them!

Family Portrait

Newborn Baby

Older Siblings with Newborn

Newborn Portrait

Doug’s Rant – Instagram vs. Vine and Getting Hacked – June 20, 2013

Yep – turns out I’ve got more to say….

Doug Cohen

Insta……death of Vine on Droid?

I became intrigued from the time Vine was launched as a potentially awesome platform for Frameable Faces.  We have used video quite a bit – mainly on YouTube.  It’s an effective platform for testimonials, slide shows from sessions, various interviews and behind the scenes features.  The idea of Vine is exciting because it provides what I have seen one guru refer to as “snack sized” social media bites to go with videos on our YouTube channel which are more like “main courses”.  Vine could be to video what Instagram has been to photos for us – just fun quickie behind the scenes shots – visits from friends, events, photo shoots, and even some silliness now and then.  Vine was released only for iOS (iPhone/iPod touch) on January 24th.  We are an Apple shop for everything but our smartphones – we have Droids because T-Mobile didn’t get the iPhone until April of this year.  As Droid owners (Samsung Galaxy Blaze 4G to be exact) we had to wait from January 24th to June 3rd before Vine was released for Droid.  That’s a pretty long wait, and when it was finally released it was a mess…….  and it’s still a mess.  There is no way to search for other users which totally takes the social aspect away from a social media app.  Totally useless.  Sure we can be patient and wait – it’s frustrating but what else can we do?  We’re not ready to buy iPhones just yet.

Well, yesterday I opened instagram like I do a few times every day and there was a notification there that Instagram has added video!  15 seconds vs. Vine’s 6, with the familiar feature of Instagram layers (specific video layers) and the option to pick a cover image for your video.  To me this means Vine’s window for Droid users could shut.  Why would I bother trying to build a following on Vine when I can share the same (if not better) content on a platform in the same fashion where I already have a following?  I also have to say that while the 6 second limit on Vine forces people to find creative ways to tell a story in 6 seconds, it is just so short.  Unless Vine proves to become so overwhelmingly popular with our high school seniors that we can’t ignore it, I think I won’t bother with it.  I’m not adding another platform if I don’t need it.  Sorry Vine, I could be wrong but I think you blew a huge opportunity by releasing such a buggy mess for Droid and not fixing it before Instagram had their own video option ready.  We’ll see how it plays out.  Meanwhile here is a blog post with a great breakdown comparison between the two.

UPDATE – I tried to use Instagram video since I finished writing the section above and since T-Mobile doesn’t want to release an update for the Samsung Blaze 4G from Android 4.0.4 to 4.1 or better I can’t make Instagram videos for the time being.  Instagram videos can only be made with the 4.1 version or newer.  Ugh.  The struggle continues…

UPDATE TWO (June 24th) – Vine added search!  Now I’m using it and enjoying it.  Seeing the updates being pushed to my phone is like watching two heavyweights battle it out – the other morning it was happening in real time!  Meanwhile there seems to be a bit of a backlash going on about videos intruding on Instagram feeds…  Anything else I have to say on the topic will go into the next rant…

Hacked….

Yes we were hacked.  What a nightmare – someone (apparently from Poland) got into our website and uploaded some malware.  Google flagged our website and blog with a warning basically preventing anyone from getting to either site with a computer for what ended up being a couple weeks.  It’s a good thing we don’t survive by an online ordering business or we could have been in huge trouble.  They didn’t change any content on either site or ruin either of them, it was just a pain in the butt having to identify what happened, have our host reset the passwords, check for any bad files, clean the bad files off, and then submit a request to Google to remove the warning.  The folks at EPK Design who originally designed this blog for us were hugely helpful in getting this sorted out.  That was a bummer and that was why you didn’t see any new posts here for the first half of June.

Other quick hits…

  • We are excited for our new class of 2014 senior mural in the window of our studio!  It’s up and it looks fantastic!
  • I find Steve McCurry’s photos to be fascinating.  If you haven’t checked out his blog before you should bookmark it and you can start with this photo essay on the monsoons on the other side of the world.
  • This was our first year at Relay For Life West Bloomfield as Team Frameable Faces!  It was a great day and there will be a blog post about it here soon…

Mickey…..Kitty!

Sure everyone has heard of Mickey Mouse, but Mickey the kitty is “taking Mickey back” for kitty nation.  Who says a cat can’t be named Mickey right?  Right.  Just look at him – he doesn’t care what you think.  You can’t stop him…

"I'm King of the World!!!"

I’m King of the World!!!

Photo of a kitty

This couch is just my style…

Mickey the cute kitty

Hey I was told there was fish in here. There are no fish in here.