Tag Archives: Doug Cohen

Senior Pictures With Style, Beauty, and Elle-gance!

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Our session with Elle definitely produced senior pictures with style, beauty, and Elle-gance!!!  This was technically our fourth time photographing Elle – once with her family a couple years ago, once for her spokesmodel session, once for the mural in our window (sometimes I forget to count that) and now her senior pictures!  Anticipation for this session was high, and Elle certainly delivered!

To Heritage Park We Go…

Heritage Park served a couple of purposes on this day.  Not only is it a fantastic park with many obvious and hidden treasures for a photographer, but for Elle it was a safe distance away to keep her out of range for the Detroit Country Day water wars (haha).  Her mom joined us for the session and we had a blast!  So let’s get started – I believe this is the first time we’ve used this wooden door in the stone wall that we love:

Elle-Gance

A little side note here – very often we feature both full length and close up photos of our seniors, but these are all full length of Elle because Ally said she just looked so cute and coordinated with her outfits she felt the full length showed off the whole look!

Elle-gance…

For this session we spent the whole time outdoors which is a nice change especially at Heritage Park.  It gives us a chance to really explore.  The blossoms framing this photo and the backlight on Elle’s hair really come together nicely here…

Elle-gance

Let’s take a look at the first vine from this session… yes a session so nice we vined it twice!

You can see from the vines we used a number of different spots for this session many of which we won’t get to here…  But a shot like this next one is just undeniable even if we didn’t vine it:

Elle-gance

Now for vine number two!

So fun!  Okay now one last shot…

Elle-gance

So there it is – style, beauty and Elle-gance!  We hope you enjoyed these highlights from our morning with Elle!

 

Brad’s Senior Session Definitely BLUE Us Away!

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We were pretty excited when Brad’s mom Stefany brought him here for senior pictures because we go way way back with his family – for me personally it’s about 35 years!  Brad is a really nice kid and an impressive guy.  He’ll be attending The University of Michigan in the fall and it’s always cool when your high school colors match your college ones this closely!

Go Blue…

This session “blue” us away since the predominant color is blue – Brad brought his Detroit Country Day navy blue and gold baseball gear which helped bring out his blue eyes for these pictures.  So let’s take a look at a few of them shall we?

First we started out on location which we do for all morning location sessions since we like to catch the sun lower in the sky for lighting purposes, and our conditions were great…

Blue

Nice shot huh?  We did one shirt change for the location part and grabbed a few more shots before we headed back to the studio.  Here’s one of them:

Blue

Let’s take a look at our behind the scenes vine of our day before we take it back to the studio…

Back to the studio…

We got some great stuff on location so it was time to head back to the studio.  We love the combo you see in the vine with the khakis and the baseball gear (note the shirt and Michigan tie under the jersey) – here’s a great one with the cap turned around.  Fun!

Blue

We’ll leave you with one more with this pensive and dramatic close up in black and white.  Check it out…

Blue

So there you have it!  Another fantastic senior session as we start winding down on the class of 2015 and start gearing up for the class of 2016!  Best of luck to Brad and we hope you all enjoyed the highlights from his session!

Super Mario And His Super Spokesmodel Session!

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Some blog post titles just write themselves….

Super Mario!!!

Yes this kid is one of a kind.  We had been following each other on Instagram for a while from afar and when we reached out to Mario to discuss representing our studio as a spokesmodel he was totally prepped and ready.  He knew our other spokesmodels already and was pretty well versed on our studio and how we roll.  What an impressive young man.  Personable and funny, we had an absolute blast on his spokesmodel session!

We Periscoped some of his session live and people were tuning in – especially for the “Super Mario” segment which was really just a tease for his senior session coming later this year.  So stay tuned for that!  Meanwhile let’s get to the photos shall we?  We started off in the studio with some soccer in Mario’s West Bloomfield High School gear and some fire…

Super Mario

Fierce!  Laker Nation represent!

Next up was the “Super Mario” segment of the session where Mario came prepared with his Super Mario shirt!  Hilarious…  We even put on the Super Mario music while we broadcasted live and people were cracking up.

Super Mario

As of the writing of this post the behind the scenes vines of Mario’s session are not linking to twitter which means I’ve been unable to pull one into this post for your viewing pleasure….  I encourage you strongly to go to our Vine page by either downloading the app to your smartphone and following us or going directly to our page online by clicking the link www.vine.co/frameablefaces.  At that point you’ll see two vines of Mario because I tried it twice to try to get it to tweet…

Heading to the city…

We like the urban look from time to time and sometimes we like it gritty.  We don’t mean that as a slam on Pontiac – actually we love downtown Pontiac.  It just has a bit of a different aesthetic than downtown Birmingham for example.  So Pontiac is where we headed…

Super Mario

Love that shot in black and white…

We’ll leave you with one more with a pose that Ally loves, and we had great lighting on this one:

Super Mario

Cool right?  Mario is a cool guy and we couldn’t be more excited to have him on board representing our studio for the class of 2016!  We hope you enjoyed these highlights from our day with him!

Twin Sister Senior Time Part Two – Cierra’s Turn!

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Welcome to part TWO of twin sister senior time!  If you joined us yesterday you saw part one of this beautiful twin sister senior photo session which focused on Tierra, and today as promised we are flipping it!  Today we’ll be featuring Cierra with a special return guest appearance by Tierra in a photo of them twinning on location!

I wrote at length yesterday about how fun it is to be with twins and now I’m thinking about another fun benefit of working with twins – we get to blog about them twice which gives us an excuse to show off more of the session!

Twin Sister Senior Time Part Two…

So let’s start now again in the studio since that’s what we did with the girls…  I’m a fan of this first shot of Cierra because it’s unique – Ally likes to capture this pose frequently highlighting our senior’s eyelashes.  Cierra looks beautiful…

Twin Sister Senior Time Part Two

This next outfit still on the black background is fun with the cute hat for this playful pose!

Twin Sister Senior Time Part Two

Now let’s take a look at the behind the scenes vine highlighting Cierra from our day:

Let’s head back outside…

Let’s now bring Tierra back in and take a look at another photo of the twins together at the entrance to one of our favorite bridges, although technically it’s a platform I guess since it ends and doesn’t lead to the other side…  ha.

Twin Sister Senior Time Part Two

Love that photo, and let’s take a look at a “bonus” vine of the twins together!

Okay back to a couple more with Cierra…

Twin Sister Senior Time Part Two

Love that serious pose and the backlight on her hair!  And one more full length for the road…

Twin Sister Senior Time Part Two

So that will do it – we hope you’ve enjoyed both of these posts highlighting the twins.  We certainly had fun working with them!

Twin Sister Senior Time – First With Tierra!

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We love twins – no really we love twins!  They have a special bond and senior pictures are so much fun and such a big milestone.  So when any senior comes in for pictures it’s a big deal and it’s one of the things we love most about our “jobs”, but with twins we get to spend a full 5+ hours with them which gives us a window into their relationship that makes for a memorable day every time.

Twin Sister Senior Time…

Tierra and Cierra were no exception, and they are North Farmington Raiders to boot so as Raiders ourselves we were pretty excited for this session.  Beautiful girls, beautiful mom and they were a blast to be with!  So today we are going to feature photos of Tierra along with a guest appearance by Cierra and then tomorrow we’ll flip it!  Let’s start in the studio with Tierra on the black backdrop…

Twin Sister Senior

With this shot we actually can’t remember for sure but I think we had the fan going on Tierra’s hair but only slightly – just to give it a little lift.  Gorgeous…

While we’re on the black background let’s bring in Cierra for a black and white close crop of these beauties together!

Twin Sister Senior

Next we’ll take a look at Tierra on the red couch against the new red background – this is the first time we’ve done this pairing and we love the result:

Twin Sister Senior

Next we’ll take a look at the highlights of Tierra’s shoot on our behind the scenes vine:

Let’s head outside…

We had a perfect day for this session which was nice and we went to one of our favorite nature preserves for these next couple photos:

Twin Sister Senior

And we’ll end for today on this one…

Twin Sister Senior

So there you have it – twin senior sister time part one!  We hope you enjoyed Tierra’s pictures and be sure to return tomorrow for part two with Cierra!

Playing It Kool With Kyliel On His Senior Session!

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Playing it kool with Kyliel is just what we did when he came to the studio for his senior pictures.  He is a unique kid in a good way – soft spoken, plenty of style and a great look.  He came in with his grandmother who is just a sweetheart and she told us his story – this young man has overcome plenty of obstacles and for his family they look at him as a real life Superman!  Indeed, Superman’s given name by his parents on Krypton was Kal-El – pretty close right?  With Kyliel we planned an all-studio session which is nice.  We’ve explained this before, but it bears repeating that while the majority of our senior sessions combine indoor and on-location photos, the sessions which are all one or the other are a nice change of pace because we get to thoroughly explore one or the other.

So let’s get to our kool session with Kyliel!

Red hair, red background – exploding off the screen…

So first we pulled out our new red background which we have pretty much been obsessed with since we got it.  Kyliel has great hair – just a great red tint that looks so cool and we love this shot:

Playing It Kool

Kool – right?  Love it.  Next we went for the formal GQ look which Kyliel rocked quite well…

Playing It Kool

Let’s pause for a second to go behind the scenes of the shot above with a vine of the action…

Playing It Kool – real Kool

I love what Ally did with this next shot…  it speaks for itself.

Playing It Kool

Lastly we’ll leave you with one more as Kyliel represents Laker Nation with his West Bloomfield gear!

Playing It Kool

So now you understand what I mean when I say we were playing it kool with Superman Kyliel!  We loved his session and we hope you enjoyed the highlights!

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

Doug’s Rant – Why You Should Care About “Google My Business”

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It seems that you should care about Google Plus and now the new “Google My Business” after all, especially if you are a small business owner.

Google’s social media network (they prefer to call it a “layer”) has been around since June of 2011.  Google Plus is not as popular as Facebook but it’s still Google and it’s not going anywhere.  Does this mean you have to participate and get immersed in yet another social media platform?  Not quite.

Google My Business

However, here is where you should pay attention.  A while back I “claimed” Frameable Faces on Google.  I just went on Google and verified that I am an owner so I could fill in the information that is there about our business.  That is an important step because Google is obviously the most popular way to search the Internet.  Regardless of how much or how little you bother with search engine optimization or social media, people are using Google to find you and they will continue to do so.

What I didn’t know is that at some point by claiming my “place” (my business) on Google, that prompted Google to create a verified Google Plus Page for Frameable Faces – I had no idea it existed.  Kind of like a Facebook Business Page that they were calling “Google Places For Business” and now they have announced they have changed the name to “Google My Business”.  If you’re a little confused it’s okay – Google has done a good job of confusing the marketplace with how they’ve rolled out their products.

The good news is that the new “Google My Business” does represent an opportunity.  One thing I noticed when I went to the Frameable Faces page they created is that Google had been collecting data for me all along.  It told me how many people had viewed the page (presumably from Google search results), how many people had asked for driving directions to the studio and where they asked for them from, what key words they used to find my listing – lots of good data!

Are you going to lose business by not using Google My Business?  I can’t say that for a fact, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to ignore it.  From just what I see locally very few brands know about this so don’t feel like you’ve missed the boat so far.  The question is are you going to use this to your advantage going forward?

Here are a few benefits to setting up your page in my mind:

  1. It just generally looks good – when someone does a search for your business on Google it looks better when the results represent a thriving and welcoming business – one that appears to actually be in the game.
  2. Familiarizing yourself with this page and managing it can give you potentially valuable Google data and anaylytics about traffic and clients finding your brand via Google search.
  3. Getting a slight edge on your competition since not many brands are taking advantage of this.
  4. An opportunity to post and share fresh content in a spot where potential new customers might see it (as opposed to only a portion of your Facebook following for example).  Look at the screenshot below.  By doing a Google search for Frameable Faces this is what comes up on the right hand side of the screen.  Notice the “follow” buttons along with a link to an article from our blog that I posted to the Frameable Faces Google page.  It’s a way to capture fans directly from Google search results.

Google My Business

Don’t just take my word for it, check out this article about the benefits of this new tool.  Listen, I am not predicting that Google Plus will become a pervasively popular social media site with the masses like Facebook.  It is definitely growing now but it might not ever reach that tipping point where “everyone” is on it….and then again it might.  Either way we already know the search engine is dominant, so at least set up your brand properly for now with Google My Business.