We are on a roll with those West Bloomfield Lakers right now and these sessions have been killer! But more importantly these seniors have been awesome and Justin is no exception. Justin brought the whole fam-tourage with him and everyone had fun. Actually Justin’s mom Christin had been to the studio for her own shots a while back so this was a fun reunion of sorts. Justin was still in the thick of preparing for the football season at “The Swamp” which is the nickname of the West Bloomfield football stadium and we had plans to get some football shots in since football is Justin’s jam – but more on that later….
Starting out in Pontiac…
We wanted to get some cool urban shots first so off to Pontiac we went and found a cool new spot we had never used before – it’s Justin’s spot now (we name new spots after the senior who pioneers it)!
Good lookin’ dude! Plus that lighting! We started in the evening and got some of that golden hour sun…
We also have some fun behind the scenes action from the live streaming we did during the session – first in Pontiac on Facebook Live:
We also grabbed this cool photo with the little mirror image reflection…
Back to the studio for some fire…
We love setting things on fire here as you may know… here’s the behind the scenes from the YouTube Live broadcast – be sure to subscribe to our channel if you visit!
….and here is the fiery result!
Justin’s Jam
Night time sessions are rare for us but sometimes they can be so cool! We headed over to the Swamp where you can see #32 flying around getting it done for those Lakers this fall! A little off camera flash and a stationary FJ Westcott Ice Light and voila!!!
How cool is that? An awesome session all the way around – we hope you enjoyed the highlights of Justin’s jam!
Equipment used:
These are our affiliate links to the products we used on this session:
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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!
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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Yes we are huge fans of Lauren and her mom Gabrielle, and it’s been so much fun having Lauren represent our studio as a spokesmodel for the class of 2018! Her spokesmodel session was truly epic and we spent much of it in Detroit at the old Michigan Building and around Eastern Market. It was one of those sessions that sticks out for sure – just awesome. So we had a slight dilemma – we loved exploring around Detroit and they wanted to go back for Lauren’s senior session. Hey we’re always up for a Detroit session since there is so much going on down there and so many amazing places to shoot. The question was could we possibly top what we already did down there? Hmmmmm…. Could we reach an even higher level with Lauren?
Reaching an even higher level with Lauren…
Ally predicted that we would indeed be able to kick it up yet another notch. And frankly I was confident too – we usually do. We suggested Belle Isle which hadn’t been on Lauren’s radar but she trusted us. Besides there was a little discussion around whether a beach shot might be nice – we had never used the Belle Isle Beach. So we set out with plenty of possibility and adventure in the air and the results? Well…… see for yourself.
Great one to start with right? Love the framing of our girl with the vines!
We also have plenty of behind the scenes fun as usual with some live broadcast replays (excuse my raggedy voice – I was recovering from being pretty well under the weather for a few days). First we went live on YouTube. If you want to tune in to other broadcasts be sure to hit the red subscribe button at our channel!
We ended up spending a ton of time on Belle Isle – some shots at the fountain, a few at the willow tree above, and a few over by the conservatory including this colorful one with all the pretty flowers surrounding Lauren!
I also had a little fun of my own with the pano feature on my iPhone – just for fun here is one at the conservatory that I thought was kind of cool…
AMATEUR iPhone panoramic photo for fun!
Next we headed around to the other side of the island to the beach which we pretty much had to ourselves and this turned out to be a great call! Here is the fun behind the scenes Facebook Live broadcast replay where Gabrielle even took over for a few minutes as guest host as I struggled a little with the wind trying to reflect some light on our subject!
And here is one of the fantastic results. LOVE this of Lauren…
So yeah…. awesome stuff at Belle Isle! But we weren’t done….
To The Belt!
The Belt is a very cool alley in downtown Detroit where we’ve taken photos several times and Lauren had her eye on it so we headed over there for a few and we found this ultra cool art gallery there. They let us come right in and shoot, and sometimes these unplanned things prove to be major highlights! I took another pano while Ally was setting this one up…
Another AMATEUR iPhone panoramic photo for fun!
And here is the result!!!
Wow right???
What a day – we actually finished it up with lunch at Johnny Noodle King and it was the perfect end to a day we won’t soon forget as we indeed reached a higher level with Lauren in our Detroit return! We hope you enjoyed the highlights of our day!
Equipment used:
These are our affiliate links to the products we used on this session:
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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!
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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Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World! Click here!
How to build a senior….. Hmmmmm. Well we’d start with some nice, add some smart, toss in a dose of passion, maybe some good looks (but that’s an optional ingredient), and we’d wrap it in a great family before we pop it in the oven to bake. And hey look! It appears we would build Nick! Nick is a guy you just want to be around – just an all around good dude who is smart and dedicated as all get out to his twin passions baseball and football which he plans to play one of at the next level. Heck he took one (?) day off transitioning from one to the other as he readies himself for his senior season as a captain at West Bloomfield playing in “The Swamp” (more on that later). Actually you may remember Nick from his spokesmodel session and you may even remember his sister Emma who was a Frameable senior too! What a great family – and mom Teresa is a delight too – she even reprised her role briefly guest hosting some of the behind the scenes live streaming (more on that later too hehe)! So let’s get to it.
We Would Build Nick
It was nice to be able to get outside in the nice weather for a change with our guy since the last time we were on location with Nick he was being pelted by snow! We focused first in downtown Birmingham for a few urban shots which came out really cool:
Great shot! Very cool little stairwell we found…
We also have plenty of behind the scenes fun as usual… first we went live on Facebook – don’t miss Nick’s awesome sign off at the end… hehe…..
Okay let’s take a look at a couple more photos from the city…
Plenty of walls and cool surfaces to use in Birmingham and Nick was prepared with the full pop up wardrobe suitcase for a few outfit changes.
Just chillin’…
To The Swamp!
At this point it was time to head over to WBHS – to “The Swamp” where they had just finished installing the brand new turf at the stadium which does indeed include the words “The Swamp” written across the turf on the home sideline! They have a pretty rowdy and dedicated student section at the home football games! We went live on YouTube for this segment (I didn’t realize I had my screen lock on at the beginning – but that’s LIVE – you just go with it). The “Teresa Takeover” happens around the 6 minute mark!
And here is an awesome shot of Nick on the very field he and his Laker teammates plan to dominate this fall!
So there you have it! Nick’s session rocked and we hope you enjoyed the highlights of our day with him! If we were going to build a senior from scratch we would definitely build Nick!
Equipment used:
These are our affiliate links to the products we used on this session:
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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!
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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Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World! Click here!
Sometimes life happens – things get crazy, you’re raising kids and it’s the glorious chaos of life, right? Heba is a perfect example of this with the story of this session – first let’s just say at the end of the day she has 4 amazing kids and just an overall fabulous Frameable family! 4 kids ranging from 15 to 3 – which we know ain’t always easy, but judging by the results we have to give it up to her and Vinny – they are pulling it off in style. Meanwhile Heba stopped in here a year ago to plan a family session and then it didn’t happen – like the first sentence I typed above life happened! We had almost forgotten about her – almost. But when she popped back in with a huge friendly smile asking “remember me?” I absolutely did and we were thrilled that she came back! Her little man was turning 3 and the timing was good for them to get this scheduled. So without further adieu let’s take a look – we’re going to present these a little differently than we usually would because we LOVE the 4 close ups of the children which Heba will be displaying in her home along with the family portrait!
Fabulous Frameable Family!
Let’s start with the traditional family portrait – what a gorgeous crew. The little guy and I bonded – we were giving each other “two thumbs up” to get ready for each shot and he was a total pro – and I gotta tell you, not all 3 year olds are the easiest to photograph, but we usually can get it done and with this little one there was no problem.
So here is the Fabulous Frameable Family:
….and here are the children in order from oldest to youngest with matching close crop black and white portraits! Love these.
Stunning right? We really enjoyed having this crew in the studio, and we hope you enjoyed the highlights of our time with them!
Equipment used:
These are our affiliate links to the products we used on this session:
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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!
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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Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World! Click here!
Sammy is a future chef in the making – the dude can create some serious culinary concoctions and he knows quality when he tastes it so you know if he has any say at all in the menu at his bar mitzvah that it’s gonna be gooooooood – a scrumptious soirée! And in this case the food didn’t disappoint! We know because we were there – as guests, because Sammy is our nephew! Ally did indeed take a few photos at the weekday service at Adat Shalom Synagogue which we’ll share here, but the bulk of these highlights come from the event and is the work of our fantastic event photographer Angela! Let’s start with a few photos from the small chapel earlier in the week at shul.
What a legacy…
Sammy’s great grandfather was the cantor at Adat Shalom for many years so it was very special for Sammy to carry on that tradition as the first of his generation within that family to become a Bar Mitzvah. Here are a few highlights as Sammy leads the service and does the name proud:
Sammy reads from the Torah
Sammy with his dad and maternal grandfather putting on tefillin
Sammy and his parents receive a blessing from the Rabbi
Let’s get to the Scrumptious Soirée!
The party was held at the Royal Oak Farmer’s Market – a great wide open space for a bash! The food was off the charts with Asian, Mexican, and Israeli stations for food and everyone had a blast – I know we did! Sammy had a ton of fun on his big day for sure.
The Whole Scene!
Sammy gets a lift during the traditional Hora Dance!
Haha – think he was enjoying this?
Sammy with his peeps
The Bar Mitzvah Stud
That’s a great shot by Angela of Sammy!
The Happy Family!
Sammy kicks back and takes it in
“Then and Now” Sammy!
What is hilarious about that shot is Sammy is recreating the big photo that was taken by Ally when Sammy was only 2!
Stacy & Jason get to relax and enjoy the celebration!
We love that last shot – the way Angela framed Stacy and Jason with all the celebratory raised glasses is perfect! All in all it was a day and a night to remember at Sammy’s Scrumptious Soirée! We hope you enjoyed the highlights!
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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!
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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Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World! Click here!
This post is just a fun quick one about our day at the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair! As photographers we appreciate all things visual, as admirers of art we appreciate all things creative whether visual or otherwise sensory in other ways, and as Frameable Faces we celebrate living a life you would want to celebrate – one you would want to remember and capture. We think strolling through an art fair fits into what we do here in plenty of ways!
The 2017 Ann Arbor Street Art Fair!
Meanwhile I felt a blog post would be a good place to post our snapchat story from the day and include the links to the websites of our favorite artists from the day and have them in one spot. For starters you should get to the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair one July if you’ve never been – it’s a 4 day event that takes over a good part of the University of Michigan campus and parts of downtown (which is adjacent to campus). For those of you who may not know, the University of Michigan colors are maize and blue – hence the “a-maize-ing” title!
At this point I think we’ll let the snapchat story do the talking for a couple minutes…
Some cool stuff right? And how funny was that squirrel? And we had to throw in the spot where Ally and I bumped into each other once in Ann Arbor during our college years in front of Ulrich’s….
So let’s break it down a little and talk about the artists we focused on in the story above:
First we have the sculptural weaving of Gloria McRoberts from Watertown, TN whose fiber sculptures are hand woven from natural, undyed wool. We were really drawn to her booth and these awesome pieces. You can visit her website here.
Next we came across these amazing sketchings on skateboards done by simple pen or pencil by Jeffrey St. Romain who is from New Orleans. My favorite was the one you see of Jimi Hendrix with the lyrics from Castles Made Of Sand. Here is his website.
Next you saw a piece from Erika Bushee and her Art Rocks Studio – stunning. The rocks jut out from the surface and in the case of the one I snapped above, continue right onto the floor. Really cool.
Last but not least the piece which kept people talking on Snapchat for 24 hours and on into our Periscope community was the amazing guitar tree by Demi Heitzman who is located not far from Toledo. Here is her website.
We also would like to call attention to an amazing underwater photographer we met (even though I did not get any of his work into the snapchat) named Chris Gug. Wow. Just wow. Check out his website here.
We’re also giving a shout out to our favorite new plant based restaurant in Ann Arbor – The Lunch Room! OMG – delish right down to the deserts (VEGAN DONUTS!!!). Check it out – here’s the website.
And there you have it! A GREAT day at the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair! We hope you enjoyed the highlights!
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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!
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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Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World! Click here!
Yes we are smitten by Sophia! She’s a sweetheart and we had a fantastic senior session with her this week! There’s a fun backstory here as her mom Rebecca found us on Periscope while watching our Doug & Ally Morning Show, and it’s always fun when we connect with people who tune in from close by so we can meet them easily in person. And one more funny tidbit here – I saw Sophia the day before her session at her place of work and I was so preoccupied that it didn’t even register when she said “hi” – and when she followed it up with “I’m so excited for my senior pictures tomorrow” I said “Sophia!!!!” Haha…
Smitten By Sophia
Meanwhile Sophia was totally prepared for the session and when she walked in with a great wardrobe selection and her makeup done by Mandy Rose we were, well, smitten! So let’s get to a few of the photos shall we?
We started in the studio on the black background with the “black and blowy” setup with the fan:
Stunning right?
As usual we have some fun behind the scenes video from the live broadcasts we did at the time, starting with a Facebook Live broadcast:
Let’s take a peek at one more studio shot on that pink background before we head out…
Heading out to Quarton Lake
We actually got lucky with the weather because the forecast had been threatening scattered thunderstorms for days but it didn’t happen! These next two shots are awesome – starting with this shot at one of our fave spots:
Once again I’ll point out how well Sophia made use of her wardrobe – this flowery top is perfect for summer and this setting!
Now let’s take a look at our outdoor broadcast this time from YouTube Live while we were getting the shot above. Feel free to skip through my and Ally’s silliness in the middle haha…
And we have one more photo to share with the waterfall as a backdrop – the purple coordination here is the topper – just adorable!
You can see why we were “smitten with Sophia” – what a session! We were pretty excited to share these and we hope you enjoyed the highlights of our day!
Equipment used:
These are our affiliate links to the products we used on this session:
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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!
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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Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World! Click here!
An exchange I had on twitter yesterday got me thinking… Of course I often go to football for analogies because I have a background there, so as a former player and a football “purist” I may enjoy comparing statistics for fun, but I would never play “fantasy football”. I never have and never will. I actually like statistics – I do. I’ll even use them from time to time in debates about teams and players and who was better. However, analysis can cause paralysis and “fantasy football” takes analysis (and analytics) to the point where the appeal and the game of “fantasy football” itself actually has little to do with the team sport of football.
Meanwhile I participate in a live twitter chat and Livestream every Wednesday at 3PM EST called #LetsLivestream which you can tune into on Periscope at http://pscp.tv/letslivestream/. This week the topic was centered around favorite Livestream apps and one of the questions was as follows:
If you aren’t quite sure what a twitter chat is, it’s where a meeting, presentation, or just a conversation centers around questions on a topic that are put out to the group with a selected hashtag and the questions are tweeted out as “Q1” etc. as you see above. You then can jump in the conversation by using the hashtag and answering the question with an “A1” etc. My off-the-cuff answer to this question was “A6 Important yes – they don’t DICTATE a TON of what we do per se for LIVE, but we definitely use them @eggdrp1@FullScopeHQ#LetsLivestream“As a side note Eggdrp and FullScope are the two main websites we use to grab our analytics for our Periscope broadcasts. Facebook Live and YouTube provide plenty on their own.
At this point an exchange ensued where a Canadian Livestreaming company named Livescale chimed in and replied to my tweet stressing the importance of analytics – that’s one of the great things about a twitter chat – you meet people and have conversations around a shared interest – twitter should be SOCIAL! Don’t forget that. But the exchange got me thinking as you can see by my reply:
How Important Should Analytics Be?
My reply is a perfect lead in to the football analogy. See here is the thing… Analytics – statistics – data – numbers that tell you how many viewers you had watching on a broadcast, how many comments they made, how long they watched for, how many times they shared in the app or on other platforms, how many times they took screenshots or gave other feedback like hearts on Periscope – all these numbers can give you an idea of how successful the broadcast was depending on your goals. They can tell you what your growth looks like over time and give you endless ways to measure how you’re doing. Livescale isn’t wrong. These numbers are indeed important. For example, Tom Brady (another #10 at Michigan after me – ha) is the greatest quarterback to ever play the game of football, and as a quarterback he is responsible for commanding the offense down the field to score more points than the other team to win games. He handles the ball on every offensive play and if you look at his statistics they tell the story of a guy who yes, would be considered at the top based on the numbers:
Tons of statistics there – he’s thrown for over 61 thousand yards and over 450 touchdowns. The numbers dotting his career in bold indicate statistics where he was number one in the NFL in that statistic. These are just regular season statistics – he’s also been the winning Super Bowl QB more than anyone in history. The data goes on and on, and these statistics / analytics tell the story of success on a massive scale.
Now let’s look at Larry Allen….
In my opinionLarry Allen was the most dominant offensive lineman to ever play. As a Dallas Cowboys fan I probably watched Larry Allen in around 140-ish of the 176 games he played for Dallas (on TV) and he was a beast. Strong, massive, quick, nasty – a first ballot Hall of Famer. And just look at those stats…. Wait what? You see, while his coaches may have been breaking down his game films and grading him out on his performances, the only official statistics for Larry are the 4 fumbles that happened nearby him on the field that he was able to recover over the course of his career. As an offensive lineman Larry may have never touched the ball aside from those 4 times in 14 years. So how do we know Larry was successful? Because we were there watching Larry – watching him move, neutralize and flatten defenders one after the other. There are no official statistics for what Larry did and it doesn’t matter. Statistics DON’T tell the story in this case.
It’s not all that different in Livestreaming. Analytics don’t always tell the whole story. Sure they are important and shouldn’t be ignored. However if only 10 people watched your broadcast but it changed their outlook, started a relationship or converted a client then it may have been a more successful broadcast than if 500 people were there live and none of that happened. If one person watching your broadcast made a comment that opened your eyes to a new way of thinking that’s better than 578 comments of nonsense because you’re broadcasting drama that attracts people like a train wreck and you’re not even looking at the comments because you’re so wrapped up in your own…..drama…
The same goes for all social media – build your community organically and yes track your analytics. Watch for trends and try to track towards your goals. But make sure you focus on your relationships and the vibe and culture around your brand, your broadcasts and your content as a whole. Be true to that and then the analytics – while they are important – won’t be the only thing that tells your story, and they shouldn’t be.
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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!
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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Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World! Click here!
We get excited when Shaista brings back the whole crew! We started photographing her kids shortly after we opened our studio space here in the Orchard Mall and they are just an awesome family – great kids and much fun to have around. The wrinkle this time was that Shaista brought her husband Shabbir to get the whole family in the photos! There’s a little story here – we’ve known Shaista and the kids for years but we never met Shabbir before so the running joke was that he wasn’t real – that we didn’t believe he existed. Haha! Well we can now say he does indeed exist and he’s as delightful as we would have expected. I joked with him that we thought he was a phantom and he replied “Hey I was out working hard for these guys!” Now that’s a good guy. So without further adieu let’s take a look at some sneak peeks of this fabulous session!
Shaista Brings Back The Whole Crew…
Let’s start with the whole fam in a portrait with traditional dress which is always a joy – such vibrant colors against the brown earth tones… love this:
What an awesome group!
We also have some video replays from the live broadcasts we did during the session for a little behind the scenes fun – first on YouTube Live which we just started doing some of – you can subscribe to our channel here!
Next let’s focus in on a photo of just the happy couple!
They look fantastic!
We also have a little more behind the scenes fun this time from the Facebook Live broadcast we did:
They’re Growing UP!!!
Now let’s focus on the kids! We have a couple of photos of the 4 of them being, well…..the 4 of them! Haha!
First in the traditional clothing…
And next in some casual gear…. love it!
So fun!!! You can tell they were having a blast – being kids but still really well behaved – love them!
And there you have it – when Shaista brings back the whole crew we have a ton of fun. We hope you enjoyed the sneak peeks from their session!
Equipment used:
These are our affiliate links to the products we used on this session:
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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!
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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Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World! Click here!
So much has been going on in the social media world this past week (Periscope Monetizes) or so – or at least it seems this way for us. I’ve got a few topics to cover with a few tips and of course a couple of observations and opinions….
Let’s get to it, starting with the major headlines for this post…
YouTube Gets LIVE
We had heard about YouTube livestreaming for a while but weren’t sure if it would be on our radar anytime soon. The rollout seemed somewhat shrouded in mystery as this article from techcrunch.com pointed out last month… But at this point we can tell you that it’s available to verified accounts with at least 100 subscribers, so at the urging of our wonderful Periscope friend Sonam (who loves YouTube Live) we gave it a shot with no warning or announcement… Here’s the result:
We had a lot of fun and we had people there! There were people we knew and new people we didn’t from shares during the broadcast. We picked up three new subscribers during the broadcast and we got this little report at the end:
Observations from a veteran livestreamer but not a YouTube expert:
The comments are a little delayed (time from when a viewer comments to the time you see it and respond) but the delay got better over the course of the broadcast
You can block a viewer or put one in “time out” for 5 minutes if you’re being trolled
Viewers are only allowed to comment so many times – there’s a limit on comments (apparently there is a monetization model that allows you to override this once you get to 1000 subscribers)
The comments do not show on the playback so be aware of this if you are creating a video that you want to stand on its own after you finish. Keep in mind that you can edit, tag, select a thumbnail – all the things that you can do with all other YouTube videos you upload. We are putting our livestreams there into a separate playlist.
Oh – and the filters!!! You’ll see them above if you watch but here’s a sampling…
Ally likes the bubbles – I think they’d be cooler if you could pop them… lol
Taaaaaaake Onnnnnnnn Meeeeeeeee……! Hehe…
Paranormal Activity anyone….?
Vintage grainy black and white…
And of course…. the dance party / disco ball effect…..
Awesome moves (if we do say so ourselves lol), lots of possibilities, wheels are turning here at Frameable Faces.
A couple more YouTube tips while we’re at it:
If you want to get to 100 subscribers so you can go live (once you’ve had your page verified) you should make sure people are able to see whom you’ve subscribed to so they can follow you back if they are so inclined – otherwise they won’t even know you subscribed:
Make Sure That Third Box Is Unchecked!
One more thing: Be sure once you do hit 100 subscribers that you claim a custom / vanity URL for your channel! http://youtube.com/frameablefaces/ looks way better and consistent with our other profiles than some random gibberish.
Periscope Monetizes
Periscope announced an update that brings monetization to the game for scopers and for the app! I won’t lay out ALL the details here, but suffice it to say we generally see this as a good thing overall. Are there questions about what effect this may have on content creation on the app and whether the introduction of money will “infect” the community somehow? Yeah I suppose. But this just came out two days ago and you can now purchase coins to use to give three levels of “super hearts” to a broadcaster during a livestream there. We’ve already jumped in giving and receiving. Here’s a screen shot from our broadcast yesterday:
You can see the message from Periscope that our friend @redefiningrich1 whom we call “Suzi Q” gave us a “super heart” and you can actually see that the super heart is extra sparkly to the right. As a side note – the compliment to Ally on the screen is a funny auto response from the “Eggbot” from eggdrp.com. There are three levels of super hearts – they increase in value and animation effect on the screen. They then are tallied as “stars” and once you receive 185,000 total super hearts / stars you can apply with Periscope to be a super scoper of sorts and get payouts on the hearts monetarily. I know, it’s a little confusing but it does make sense after a bit.
A couple quick thoughts on Periscope Super Hearts:
Our stance on this has always been that if people want to donate or tip we would accept it if Periscope made that an option on the app. We aren’t going to call a ton of attention to it and we certainly aren’t going to make anyone feel like we require it or expect them to do it in order to be in our broadcasts or a part of our community. We do certainly appreciate it and we don’t take it lightly that people find value in what we do on our broadcasts.
One major flaw we see in the rollout of Super Hearts is that not everyone receiving them will reach 185,000 stars anytime soon, and even those who do aren’t guaranteed to be approved to receive any payout, so people may be purchasing the coins to donate the super hearts to scopers who may never be able to redeem them. Periscope will get that money. Now I want Periscope to make money – I’m fine with that – the platform should make money. Could you make the case that there is nothing wrong with the app making money by being available to bring you the specific content you like and donate to? Well yeah, but without the scoper getting a piece and without you knowing if the scoper will ever get a piece? I don’t know…. I think they should address this somehow.
To be continued…..
A Couple Of Thoughts on other platforms while we’re at it…
LinkedIn has legs….
Another platform I’ve spent more time on in the last year or so than ever before is LinkedIn. I’m no expert there either but one thing I’m noticing is that posts there can have an extended life that I don’t see on some of the others. I’m finding that a good random post continues to get discovered for weeks on LinkedIn if it’s getting likes. I posted a good one two weeks ago that has been getting steady likes and views and it even seems to be picking up pace. That doesn’t happen on Facebook or Twitter. At least not without shares or retweets. I suppose it happens on Twitter on a popular tweet with a relevant hashtag and enough activity (maybe even on Instagram to a lesser degree with hashtags). But I think the difference here is that the post seems to be getting discovered in feeds without any hashtags. The activity and the views seem to be keeping it afloat so to speak. I don’t know a ton about LinkedIn algorithms but I think this example is noteworthy. Same thing when you write an article on LinkedIn – I’ve had articles picked up by LinkedIn Pulse that get views for over a year to the point where I went in and updated them so they were still accurate because people were still reading them.
As for the recent post that is getting views from a couple weeks ago…
25 likes is more than I normally get and it’s been a steady rate of 1-2 per day for two weeks now, and 2310 views is a lot for me for a random post. It clearly crossed some threshold – there haven’t been any shares and I only have 778 followers there. Meanwhile – take the advice in the post PLEASE! The Bitmoji I used is a full “Bye Felicia” even though it’s cutoff above. Haha…
Here’s a little further breakdown of who is seeing the post from the analytics:
Views from all over the country – various level employees and various companies. Pretty cool!
A Little Annoyed With Snapchat… But Geofilters Still Rock
Maybe we’re an exception in this case but as a small biz that mainly consists of Ally and me, it made sense to link my Bitmoji to our Snapchat profile. I man the Snapchat so once in a while I could add my Bitmoji to a snap, or use it in chats with our connections and our high school seniors – it’s fun! Even better, I could screen grab dual bitmojis of me and Ally from the chat and we’ve had a blast with those. Take this instagram for example with Ally and I flying in huge paper airplane! Lol…
But here’s the problem and the recent decision by Snapchat which I find to be absolutely ridiculous… They changed everyone’s profile pic in their snapcode to their default Bitmoji if it’s linked with NO OPTION to use anything else. Like so:
Now before you start with the wisecracks, I don’t WANT to be the face of Frameable Faces. I don’t even usually like both Ally and me to to be the faces of Frameable Faces! I usually like the logo for our avatars – or at least a photo of both of us like this:
I’m not the only one who is mad about this…. nothing like taking away personalization from all of your users eh? Doesn’t seem to be the smart move when you’re locked in a battle for survival with a hostile Instagram.
On a positive Snapchat note, geofilters still rock for small brands. Here is one of our senior spokesmodels Lauren using one we placed at her high school on the last day of school:
Random Twitter thoughts:
Why would you pay someone to show you how to get “15,000 new twitter followers” who has 2387 themselves? You wouldn’t. Why would you want “15,000 new twitter followers”? You wouldn’t. Make connections people – not just numbers. This garbage and this approach by many so-called “gurus” is prevalent…
Wait a sec – What About Facebook…?
Wait! No tips or ranting on or about Facebook in this post? WHAT? That’s weird…. well that’s okay I guess.
Oh wait yes – I almost forgot just a little thing I picked up that you may know already, but when you upload a native video to Facebook (which is a good idea for better presentation and reach on Facebook as opposed to a link to a YouTube video) you should consider offering captioning – like the closed captioning you see on TV. Some people may catch a video in their FB feed without clicking on it and pulling the audio. They can still follow a bit with the captioning which is pretty slick and easy to implement on Facebook. Here’s a screen shot for one I added the captioning to for our client Mark Mandell, Attorney At Law (the link is to his YouTube page by the way – please subscribe if you’re interested).
Note the text at the bottom that has been pulled right from the audio by Facebook. It’s pretty spot on but you can edit any words that are incorrect.
You can find the option to add captions in the “edit video” menu shown below – you just click the “Generate” button under the “Captions” tab to get started:
Thoughts?
That’s all for now. What are your thoughts? Do you have tips of your own? I hope you enjoyed this – I want your feedback – please share and comment!
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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!
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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Random Twitter thoughts:
