Author Archives: Doug Cohen

A Newborn Addition to a Lovely Family!

Family Photography, Frameable Faces Photography, Metro Detroit Photographer

You should’ve heard the excitement when we got the call to photograph this sweet newborn!  10 days old at the session and she was pure sugar!  Sweet, smushy and very cuddly!

Baby “S” came into the studio with her her dashingly handsome dad, her exquisite mom and her adorable big brother.   Put them together and what a beautiful family!!!  We had to so some coaxing to get these amazing smiles from big brother, L, but when we “popped” the flash, we got some fabulous smiles out of that little boy!   Don’t you just want to jump right into that photo and just squeeze his little face?!?!
After we captured the newest family photos, little Miss S got her very own turn in the spotlight.  What a little love she was!  She let us change her clothes, move her around and barely woke up for it.  There’s just something some amazing and wondrous about a sleeping newborn baby.  Little lips, little nose, little finger and little toes.   Ally was swooning!!!!
It’s families like this that make our job not really a job.  We are so lucky and so blessed!

Newborn Photography, Frameable Faces Photography, West Bloomfield Photographer

“A” For Absolute Frameable Family Photo Fun!

Family Photography, Frameable Faces Photography, Metro Detroit PhotographerYou already know how much fun we have in the studio.  And if you haven’t ever had a session with us, you can probably tell by looking at our images how much fun they look.  But when we have a family in here that can make US laugh….that’s when the real fun begins.  This is the the “A” family.  From the moment they came in to the studio, the boys were all about F-U-N!

M is all about being the big brother.  It was so much fun to watch him interact with D.  D is a typical little brother.  So funny, keeping the family (and us!) in stitches.  One liners were abundant and we were laughing while we were photographing their entire session.
And talk about some talent, too!  M brought in his cello (and gave Doug some serious cello envy, since he was a cellist in the Orchestra back in high school).  He played the theme from Star Wars and wowed Ally.  D is a pretty accomplished lego maniac.  You should have seen the pieces from his collection that he brought in!  Impressive!
J and J, you guys have some pretty amazing boys.  We had so much fun with you all!  Enjoy your sneak peaks!  Child Portraits, Child Photography, Frameable Faces PhotographyChild Photography, West Bloomfield PhotographerChild Photography, West Bloomfield Photographer

The E Family Session

A few weeks ago, we had the E family in the studio.  They were such a blast to work with!  J and Ally had been friends since high school, but had fallen out of touch until recently.  We had such a nice time working with her, her husband M and their sweet kids!  So much personality in the studio!!!  The sounds of laughter were echoing throughout the mall.  Those are the kinds of sessions we love!

 

Child Photography, West Bloomfield PhotographerFamily Photography, Frameable Faces Photography, Metro Detroit PhotographerFamily Portrait, Frameable Faces Photography, West Bloomfield PhotographerFamily Portrait, Frameable Faces Photography, West Bloomfield Photographer

The B Family – B for beautiful that is…!

Ya know how there’s that one family that you’re always so excited to see when they stop by your studio (or workplace)?  The one with the adorable little kid who’s all personality that you just want to squeeze and talk to all day?  The people who you just click with – you can just sit and talk to them while you’re working so that your work doesn’t even seem like work?

THAT family came into the studio a few weeks ago.  You may recognize little MIss E from our studio walls.  She made Ally fall in love with her because of her super sweet personality that just shines through in every single photograph.  So when her parents came by several months ago and wanted to book a session, we were over the moon excited to work with them!

There was a ton of laughing and so many big personalities at Frameable Faces that day!  Not sure how you didn’t hear all of the noise, jokes and wit from where you were, but we can assure you….it was there!!!
Child Photography, West Bloomfield PhotographerWest Bloomfield Photographer, Frameable Faces PhotographyFamily Photography, Frameable Faces Photography, Metro Detroit PhotographerFamily Portrait, Frameable Faces Photography, West Bloomfield PhotographerWatch out for the B family!!!  They’re definitely going places!  We expect big things from these guys!

Frameable Pups!

Let’s “paws” for this blog post as we celebrate a few of our frameable pups!  Pet photography is lots of fun and while dogs are not allowed in the Orchard Mall as a rule we have an exemption for our canine frameables who come to our studio for their close up.  Yes sometimes Frameable Faces Photography goes to the dogs.  Ally has been known to be a bit of a dog whisperer – she has a pretty good rapport with these furry friends and we thought we’d share a few images of Buster, Jasmine, Chuck and Maggie…   enjoy!

Frameable PupsFrameable PupsFrameable PupsFrameable Pups

Cold outside? It’s “haute” in here!

“Haute” is listed in the dictionary as “fashionable, high-class”, and we found a gorgeous model to work with to showcase our “Haute” sessions here at Frameable Faces.  These sessions are so fun and we wanted to display a few of the images from this shoot.  Sometimes it’s fun to push the envelope a little and share the results with a significant other.  Sometimes it’s fun to, ahem, really push it with a boudoir shoot and we do those at a private location, but for now we’re just talking fashionable, sexy and fun in the studio, and our model was all that and a bag of chips!  🙂Fashion Photography, Haute Photography, Frameable Faces PhotographyFashion Photography, West Bloomfield PhotographerGlamour Photography, Frameable Faces PhotographyFashion Photography, West Bloomfield Photographer, Frameable Faces Photography

Attention Small Business Owners – 10 things you should know

I just read a fantastic blog post that I wanted to share. http://virtualphotographystudio.com/photographyblog/2010/05/running-a-photography-business/comment-page-1/#comment-11993 It is entitled “10 Things You Should Know About Running A Photography Business”, but you could easily remove the word “Photography” as most of these are universal and wherever the topic is specifically photography related you could easily insert products or services from your own trade.

For us this was mostly reinforcement that we are approaching our business the right way but we still have two weaknesses on this list and we’ll be the first to admit them:

Number 3 – we need to hand off some of this bookkeeping – NOW.  I’m good at tracking many aspects of our business but I’m not exactly an expert bookkeeper and some of this stuff bogs me down.  When I read this point it kind of smacked me in the face….

Number 6 – actually more of a strength for us overall (so maybe I lied).  We do this well – we are specialists and not generalists (love that way of putting it by the way).  We do NOT specialize in event photography.  We will not photograph huge events.  Or even pretty big events.  We will photograph certain smaller events and we are selective about which ones will fit for us and our clients.  We are fortunate to have the talents of miss Angela Bell as well for some of our informal events such as engagement parties that require more casual images – she is our second photographer and she does a great job on those.  As a rule however, we specialize in portrait photography – all kinds.  Yes it’s a broad category but it’s one category we enjoy the most and it’s where we rock.  I listed this one because we need reminding – as do all business owners – to resist the temptation to accept a one-off job that isn’t really what you do best and isn’t what you want to be known for.  We’ve done this before and we’ve learned that we should not be doing it or we should at least think it all the way through first.

Hope this helps and we would like you to add any advice for us and for each other if there is something you don’t see on this list.  Please comment and join the discussion!

– Doug

Senior Highlights From The Classes of 2011 and 2012!

We love photographing high school seniors here at Frameable Faces!  As we prepare to start photographing our new crew of spokesmodels for the class of 2013 we have been reflecting on the fantastic class of 2012 and how great of a class it was.  Having gone to high school together (go North Farmington Raiders!) we still talk about high school a lot and we keep a couple of our yearbooks here at the studio.  The current seniors get a kick out of them.  They are vintage 80’s yearbooks – big hair, skinny ties and the like.  It’s fun comparing the changing styles and that leads to conversations about changing trends in senior pictures.

Do a search on Wikipedia for Senior Portraits and the article will tell you that senior portraits date back at least to the 1920’s, but today’s senior pictures aren’t your grandparents’ or even your parents’ senior photos…  today they are way more awesome!  North Farmington High School’s yearbooks for example didn’t even have color senior headshots in the yearbooks before 1988 and “back then” seniors weren’t typically going on location for part of a three hour shoot.  So as we look forward to getting started with the class of 2013 we take a brief look back at a few of our favorite images from the classes of ’11 and ’12….

Senior Highlights…

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No sibling rivalry here!

Not sure these guys could’ve been any sweeter! They truly love each other and as a mom of an older daughter and a younger son, this was HOPEFULLY a glimpse of things to come. H and M were so happy together – like best friends! A true gift that every parent dreams of!

H was a total trooper!She was completely into the photo session and put on a great smile even though it was absolutely FREEZING outside! I think that even if we had her in the water, she would have had the same gorgeous smile on her face. She was like working with a true professional and I loved every moment of it!

Frameable Faces Photography

Sitting pretty at one of the most beautiful locations!

M is absolutely adorable.His freckles were AWESOME and he has this great infectious personality!A very genuine person, very warm, friendly and was willing to do just about anything I asked him to do! He didn’t even put up much of a fight when I asked him to plant a kiss on his big sister’s cheek for a photo. Super sweetie!!!

Frameable Faces Photography

Such a cool guy!

Add in two amazing locations, and I think that’s a recipe for an exceptional photo session. These two kids were a complete and total pleasure to work with. Great kids, warm (personality, not outside!!!) kids, and NICE kids!Way to go Mom!!! H and M, you guys were the best! Thanks so much for a super fun afternoon!!! Can’t wait to show you the rest!xoxo,Ally

Boy meets girl…..

Boy courts girl through high school, college and several moves throughout thecountry. And then he enters a contest to win an incredibly beautifulengagement ring from Tapper’s Jewelry Store.

E and M have quite an amazing love story. It started back in high school (to know me is to know that I’m a sucker for couples that meet in highschool. These two actually DATED in high school. So cute!). You can read the whole story here.

Well…when we found out that E won the ring, we were asked how late we were going to be at the studio that evening. When we asked why and were given the answer, we JUMPED at the opportunity to photograph an engagement.

At 7:30, Tracie from Tapper’s came down to get us. We all but ran down the hallway (with our super excited 12 year old and 10 year olds in tow – they were almost as excited as we were!).

We walked into Tapper’s and waited while E and M were “interviewed” one last time. It was really a diversion tactic that E set up so that his whole family, M’s whole family and we could get down to the store to be able to photograph the question being popped.

Frameable Faces Engagement Photography

Down on one knee. M sees her ring for the first time.

Frameable Faces Photography, Engagement Photography, Tappers Jewelry

M realizes what is going on!

Frambeable Faces Photography, Tappers Jewelry

YES!!!!!!

Frameable Faces Photography, Tappers Jewelry

The first kiss as fiancés.

When the door opened, and E and M came out, M saw every one around. E got down on one knee with an opened ringbox, and asked M to marry him.

I was teary, my daughter was teary, both moms were teary, E was teary….you get the picture! And ya know what? SO DID I!!!

This was such an incredible event to be a part of! There’s nothing like the beginning of something absolutely beautiful. Family, love and diamonds…. Does it get any better than that???

Frameable Faces Photography, Tappers Jewelry

In front of the winning video that E submitted to win the ring.

Many congratulations to you, E and M! We hope that you’re as happy for the rest of your lives as you are now! Thank you for letting us help you capture this amazing milestone in your lives!