Tag Archives: metro Detroit photographer

Snow Or No, Doesn’t Matter – Nadia Is A Natural!

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Nadia is a natural – a beautiful photogenic, athletic, softspoken and all around nice girl.  We had a lot of fun with her and her mom Thyawana over a long period of time which is kind of nice.  Not a typical session because we broke this one up into multiple seasons, but it’s nice to put together a session that is out of the box once in a while especially when snow is involved!!!  Every year a few seniors want the snow and we’ve had some amazing snowy sessions – this was one of them.

Nadia’s fall photos….

But before we get to our winter wonderland we got together on a cloudy day last fall for a few photos over at Nadia’s high school Birmingham Groves for some really nice shots on the field and in front of the school – they had this all planned out for what they wanted and the results are awesome.  Here’s a representative photo from that day of Nadia in her letter jacket on the school sign that we think is so much fun!

NadiaNow before we switch seasons, let’s take a look at some of our fun behind the scenes action from the session(s)!  Let’s start with our six second vine for your looping pleasure:

Next we have the replay of the live Periscope broadcasts from both of those days – the first broadcast has comments and the second does not but they’re still both fun!  If you haven’t downloaded Periscope yet you NEED to – you can do so and follow us at @frameablefaces at this link.

To The Snow…

We reconvened on the West Bloomfield Trail in a snowstorm for these amazing photos.  Huge fluffy flakes that at one point were so thick they actually posed a challenge for Ally to find Nadia through the flakes!  Here is a prime example:

Nadia

Incredible!  Nadia is just stunning too…

This is one of our favorite snow photos which several of our seniors have rocked over the years:

Nadia

Let’s leave you with one more with this fabulous full length photo of Nadia….

Nadia

So there you go!  Nadia was definitely a natural and the different seasons made our time with her quite memorable!  We hope you enjoyed the highlights!

Bat Mitzvah Photos From Abby’s World Cup!

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Abby’s World Cup was a night to remember alright – our event photographer Angela captured the festivities and we have a few highlights to share with you from the happy occasion!  We have sent Angela to photograph this wonderful family before and Angela reported back some of the details for me to share…

Cookies – the magic word…

Sometimes it’s good to have a word that works when you are photographing different groupings of folks at an event to get everyone’s attention and according to Angela the word that gets these guys to giggle is “cookies”.  Haha!  She also confirmed that Abby is sweet and kind and trusted Angela with every pose which makes us happy – that’s great for a day as important as this!  We’ll start with one of our favorite types of photos – the bat mitzvah girl with her proud parents at the temple looking on from beyond…

Abby's World Cup

Next let’s take a look at a simple and sweet close up of Abby…

Abby's World CupSo cute!  Angela mentioned that it was a pretty cold day of about 30 degrees and Abby was a total trooper and a perfect model.  Angela is always good about getting this next shot which is a special one of Abby pointing to her portion in the Torah with a yad.

Abby's World Cup

Abby’s World Cup!

Abby’s party had a World Cup soccer theme and according to Angela it was a blast!  She said the really fun parties make what she does not feel like a job at all and she also mentioned that Abby and her sister got along great – that Elizabeth and Abby have a lot of inside jokes that Elizabeth used to make Abby laugh!  Here’s the family hug that we love so much as a pose!

Abby's World Cup

We love our Angela’s photographic eye and her creativity and she captured this fun photo of Abby framed by some colorful balloons!

Abby's World Cup

We’ll leave you with this parting shot of Abby with all of her peeps!

Abby's World Cup

So there you have it!  We hope you enjoyed the highlights of Abby’s special day!

Real Awesomeness With Rachel On Her Senior Session!

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Real awesomeness was what we experienced, really from the moment Rachel and her mom Wendy walked in the door for the first time!  We instantly fell in love with these two – the consultation went way longer than usual and we were laughing and having a blast.  We knew this session would rock!  Rachel is a cool girl – beautiful, really funny and she’s a North Farmington Raider like us!  We planned a great day with some studio work, some city stuff in Birmingham, and some pretty stuff too including a few shot with their golden lab Dude!

Real Awesomeness…

So let’s start with one shot from the studio before we head out.  This is one on the black background that I suggested to Ally might look great in a portrait crop instead of landscape – see what ya think…

Real AwesomenessLove it – especially the black clothing on the black background – people expect that you can’t really do that but if you light it properly it’s fantastic.

Before we head outside with the location photos let’s take a look at some of the behind the scenes action from the day.  First we have our 6 second looping Vine AND I’m also including our fun snapchat story while we’re at it.

Next we have our epic replays from our live Periscope broadcasts… these particular replays do not have the synced comments but they’re still fun especially when Wendy takes over to guest host a bit!  If you haven’t downloaded Periscope yet you can do so and follow us at @frameablefaces here.

To Birmingham…

At this point it’s time to check out the amazing awesomeness of the location photos.  First we have a couple in the city.  Here we go…

Real AwesomenessRight?  Wow.

And then there’s this…

Real Awesomeness

Nothing like perfect backlight and a perfectly timed breeze…  Rachel was really rockin’ it at this point…

Next we headed to a secluded spot along a stream that we love for this one we’ll leave you with!

Real Awesomeness

Yes this was real awesomeness alright…  We loved our day with Rachel!  We hope you enjoyed the highlights of her session!

Marveling At Marie And Her Spokesmodel Session!

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Marveling at Marie is something we started doing a couple years ago when she came along with her older twin sisters Kristen and Katherine on their senior session from the class of 2015.  We had our eye on her back then to be a spokesmodel when it was her turn, and now sure enough here she is!  Such beautiful girls and a beautiful mom too!  Marie’s mom Marilyn is one of our faves as well, so we were excited to get them in here and we can’t wait to have them back for Marie’s senior pictures too!  But first things first, let’s take a look at a few different colors and outfits that Marie rocked here in the studio for her spokesmodel session…

Marveling at Marie….

This was a total in-studio session where we could play around with a few different backdrops and for the highlights we’ll start with the grey fabric.  We love this look and haven’t used it a ton yet…

Marveling at Marie

Love the way the peach blends into it and Marie looks amazing!

Meanwhile we gave our Snapchat geofilter another whirl on this day – it was a pretty big day for the studio since we did a “Snapchat swap” with one of our Periscope friends Chris Strub where he took over our account and vice versa.  Here is a clip from our snap story from the day with our logo geofilter at the bottom and Marilyn chillin’ in the background which Marie comically points out…  haha!!!

Next we have a photo from the red background and this is a cool little “room” setup with one of our vintage chairs, the moulding and the floor…

Marveling at Marie

Now let’s take a look at our behind the scenes 6 second looping vine:

…and the first Periscope replay from the live broadcasts we did during the session so you can get a little more of a sense of the fun we have!

…and the second one!

Okay now let’s get back to a couple more photos!

Next we have one from the simple and contemporary look of the white background which is always a winner, and this pose is a winner too…

Marveling at Marie

Lastly we have one of our “signature moves” of the “black and blowy” setup which always delivers… and Marie knew how to deliver here too!

Marveling at Marie

Wow.

And there it is – you can see why we’re marveling at Marie, and why we can’t wait to get her back in here for her senior portraits later in the year!  We hope you enjoyed the highlights from her spokesmodel session!

The Frameable Faces Restoration Project!

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Polish WeddingI have always had a keen interest in history on many levels.  In addition to my own personal interest in reading books and visiting historical sites I’ve tried to find ways to incorporate history into Frameable Faces.  Not only are we capturing moments and preserving them forever when we photograph our clients, I have blogged about historical photos of American Presidents, I’ve dabbled with my Life Preservers idea on and off to do interviews with people about their personal histories and I have written about photo restoration.  This leads us to the restoration project…

Photo restoration is a special opportunity for us to help people preserve and even recover a piece of their own history that has been damaged or thought to be lost.  When someone brings in a damaged photo, we have it restored to pristine condition and return it to them and we see the tears of emotion and joy that pour out when they see the results – these are some of the best moments we have here.

Here are a couple of examples:

A lady brought in this last photo she had of her late brother from before he went off to war.  He returned from fighting but he was never the same.  This photo was faded, browned, torn, taped, incomplete and stapled to a manilla envelope (you can actually see the staple at the top of his hat).  It meant a lot to her and it meant a lot to us to present it back to her completely restored.  This is such important work.  Helping people reclaim their history.

The Frameable Faces Restoration Project

Next one of our seniors had a photo of his mom from her passport from when she came to this country as a young child.  It is the only photo that exists of her from before she came to America.  It was tiny and had part of the raised stamping from the passport on it – not exactly in great condition.

Here’s the before:

Restoration Project

Here’s the after:

Restoration Project

Next we have a baby picture of a lady who came to the studio while in her 90’s.  Such a sweet lady, Lucille’s photo had some damage around the edges from the frame it was in, a couple of creases and stains, and the photo was fading a little.

Here’s the before:

Restoration Project

Here’s the after:

Restoration Project

Here is a case of some damage and significant fading on this one… the photo was really starting to disappear and it was small – we couldn’t make it much bigger but we definitely brought her back…

The before:

Restoration Project

 

The after:

Restoration Project

 

Here’s a color wedding photo that had been significantly damaged and faded over time that just needed to be brought back to life…

Before:

Restoration Project

 

After:

Restoration Project

 

We could go on and on with examples of photos we’ve restored…

Enter Periscope and the Restoration Project…

The element we are adding to make this more of a project is the live video element.  We have an amazing community of people we have connected with literally all around the world on Periscope.  If you are unaware of Periscope it is a live streaming app owned by twitter and you can download it and follow us at @frameablefaces at this link.

At any given time in one of our live broadcasts you can be a part of a social video watching and chatting in real time with people from Australia, Israel, Turkey, Brazil, The UK, France, Russia, Malaysia, Serbia, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Germany, Spain, Morocco, Ukraine – the list goes on and on.  If someone in Sweden has an old damaged photo they want to restore they can scan it and send it to us digitally.  Periscope has allowed us to connect with people all over the world!

So with the Frameable Faces Restoration Project we are giving people the opportunity to come on to our channel to show the before and after photos and share the story of the photo with the rest of our community.  We can then record these and put them all together on a playlist on our YouTube channel.  If you don’t want to come on and do a live interview and would prefer to just give us the story separately for the blog that’s fine too!  The main thing is sharing stories with our community, bringing us together, reclaiming and restoring history!

Contact us for details if you’re interested!  You can call the studio at 248-790-7317, email me at doug@frameablefaces.com, or DM us on twitter at @frameablefaces

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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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The Thrill Of The Chase…The Sequel – His Senior Portraits!

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Chase has been one of our spokesmodels for the soon-to-be graduating class of 2016 and you may remember his spokesmodel session on this blog.  Chase has a lot going on as we’ve said before with his business with a couple of buddies PWR Detroit, and he’s heading to Indiana University in the fall!  Meanwhile with some scheduling and weather issues for his scheduled senior session we ended up breaking up this session into two different days for the studio half and the location half.  No worries – just more days to hang out with this guy….

Chase In The Studio…

Let’s start with the studio session which was first where we kept it pretty clean and simple.  Here we will highlight a couple photos against the white background….

Chase Note the PWR Detroit bracelet….  🙂

Just relaxed casual looks here – dig it.

Chase

Now let’s take a look at some behind the scenes footage from our day(s).  First with our 6 second looping vine…

Next we have the replays of the live Periscope broadcasts from the two days from our YouTube channel.  If you haven’t downloaded Periscope yet you can do so and follow us at @frameablefaces here!

First the studio part…

And now the location part!

To Birmingham…

We reconvened on another day to head out to Birmingham for the location part of the portraits and we’ll share a couple of those highlights here:

Chase

That one was pretty cool because we weren’t expecting to show up and find a fresh coat of paint a completely different color than that wall used to be!  Very cool…  Okay one more:

Chase

And there you have it!  The thrill of the Chase – the sequel!  We’ve enjoyed having Chase represent the studio this year and we hope you’ve enjoyed the highlights from our time with him!

Great Scott! What a senior session and what a senior!

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Great Scott!  What an appropriate exclamation for Scott’s senior session!  We love this kid – he and his mom Marilyn are such a blast to be around and for us it was a lot of fun because Scott reminds us a lot of our son Tony.  He looks like him and he even talks and acts like him a little – it’s crazy!  The guy is an accomplished baseball player at Orchard Lake St. Mary’s Prep High School and that’s where we went to get some photos of this defending state champ at his home diamond.

Great Scott…

But before we went on location to the field of dreams we started with some photos here in the studio on the black background, and you know what that could mean right?  Athlete, black background, could be some fire involved…..   But first we have a simple shot of Scott just being Scott – check it out:

Great Scott

That’s one good looking dude.

Okay so next Scott broke out a baseball bat and yep – we set it on fire for this cool photo:

Great Scott

Awesome!

Now let’s take a look at some behind the scenes action from the day – first with our 6 second looping vine:

Next we have the Periscope replays from our YouTube channel.  You won’t see the live comments in these broadcasts but there was indeed a live audience commenting including Scott’s girlfriend who saw the notification in her twitter feed, grabbed the app and jumped into the conversation in the location segment of the replay – that was a first for us and it was hilarious!  You can download Periscope here and follow us at @frameablefaces!

To The Diamond…

As you saw in the live video we took a few photos around the campus, but we ended up at the baseball field where we’ll highlight a couple of great photos from the dugout…

Great Scott

And one more…

Great Scott

And there you have it!  Great Scott indeed!  We hope you enjoyed the highlights of our day with him!

 

 

Havin’ Fun With Haven On Her Spokesmodel Session!

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Haven is a gem.  We’ve known this for a while since her older sister Jubilee was a spokesmodel for us for the class of 2015 and Haven has been friendly with our daughter Lacey since they started high school.  Notice a theme here?  Our spokesmodels this year are largely “Lacey approved” since this is her graduating class!  Haha – well that hasn’t actually been our main criteria but we think Lacey has good taste and we had a feeling that Haven would be a great spokesmodel when we met her a couple years ago.  We decided to spend Haven’s whole session in the studio since our weather wasn’t so cooperative and as we’ve always said sometimes it’s nice to just stay in the studio to relax and play with some different combinations, colors, backdrops, furniture, floors etc…  So yes – we were havin’ fun with Haven!

Havin’ Fun With Haven…

So we started out with the tan paper backdrop which was perfect for Haven’s first outfit.  We love the earth tones here along with her skin tone – it all comes together really nicely!

Haven

Oh and it doesn’t hurt that she’s stunningly gorgeous!

We also experimented on this day for the very first time with our new Snapchat on-demand geofilter!  Our Periscope friend Vincenzo Landino wrote this article on these and we jumped on it!  It worked out nicely and we’ll be playing with this more down the road – it’s not permanently available but we’ll announce the days it’s on on twitter.  Here is a snap that Haven herself sent out that day… the little circle in the middle of her forehead is the snapchat timer while I was grabbing the screenshot.

Haven

Check out the snazzy Frameable Faces filter!

Here is the geofence we submitted to snapchat that shows where the filter was available – in and around our studio and down the common hallways of the mall!

Here is the first snapchat video we sent out with our filter – as you can see we had some snapchat fun that day!

Okay let’s get back to a few more photos…!

Let’s move on to the purple background – this purple is really vibrant and we combined it with our light wood floor and a molding to create a “room” look:

Haven

Let’s also check out some more behind the scenes – first with a fun little looping Vine:

…and next we also have a couple replays of our live Periscope broadcasts from our Katch.me page – if you haven’t downloaded Periscope yet you need to!  Tune in for Frameable Faces TV at @frameablefaces by downloading the app here!

At this point we moved to the grey backdrop with a chair that we used for the first time a couple years ago with Haven’s sister Jubilee!  We love the way it’s ripped up in the front…

Haven

Now let’s check out our second broadcast from the session during which time we switched to the black backdrop:

And here is one of the results!

Haven

That’s a fantastic note to end this on….  we are thrilled to have this girl representing our studio this year and we look forward to her senior session later in the year!!!  We hope you enjoyed the highlights of our day with her!

A Breathtaking Example Of Maternity And Serendipity

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Serendipity is an amazing thing when it happens.  When you get swirled up in it and you know something special is happening it’s an amazing and rare experience.  Do you know what serendipity is?  Here’s the official definition:

Serendipity

Now here’s the way it went down on March 16, 2016 at Frameable Faces…

Me: Frameable Faces this is Doug!

Phone Caller: Uh hello – we have a bit of an urgent situation here with a maternity session….  um – you see my wife…. well are you available to take photos of my wife today?

Me: Wait – is she in labor?????

Phone Caller: Well no she’s not in labor – it’s not an emergency like that or anything.  Let me explain.  Here’s what happened…

What happened was that Nick and Jen were 36 weeks pregnant and had a maternity photo session planned with another studio that day.  They were all prepared with clothing and Jen had her hair and makeup done only to be told that the studio had double booked them and they were out of luck.  Sorry, no go, thanks for playing.  Nick did a quick search on Yelp, came across Frameable Faces and took a chance with a phone call.  Now keep in mind that this is NOT how we do photo sessions here.  We don’t take walk-ins as a general rule with no consultation ahead of time to plan the session where we can get to know the clients and make sure everyone is prepared and on the same page.  But these folks were in a bind and we didn’t have any appointments that afternoon – and my gut (after checking with Ally) said to go with it.

Serendipity…

We were not expecting a session that day, and they were not expecting to have to shift gears and drive almost a half hour to a studio they didn’t know on the fly for a maternity session which can be a relatively intimate affair.  But from the moment they walked in we connected – it felt right and it turned out to be one of the best maternity sessions we’ve ever done.  What a wonderful couple – we even broadcast some of the session live on Periscope and you can watch the replay below, but before we get to that let’s see a couple of the photos!

Serendipity

How cute are they?

We used two different backdrops starting with the black above and the next photo is also on the black with the sari stretched out behind Jen and her hair gently blowing – beautiful!

Serendipity

Now let’s take a look at our behind the scenes action from the session.  First we have our fun 6 second looping Vine:

Now we have the replay of the live Periscope broadcast from our YouTube page!  If you haven’t downloaded Periscope yet you should do so immediately!  You can follow us there (and just about everywhere else) at the handle @frameablefaces at this link:

Here is the link to the broadcast.

Now let’s get back to a couple of gorgeous photos of Jen on the white background.  So beautiful, so angelic!

Serendipity

Breathtaking indeed…  And we’ll leave you with one more:

Serendipity

We can’t wait to meet the baby!  Maybe, just maybe you’ll have a chance to meet the baby here too!  We were thrilled to be able to meet these two, photograph them and present them to you!  We hope you enjoyed the highlights – serendipity indeed.

 

Maya Mia! Maya Is A Fabulous Spokesmodel!

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Maya Mia!  See what we did there?  Another fabulous spokesmodel and especially one that is keeping the developing tradition of amazing seniors from Birmingham Groves!  We love all of our seniors from all of the schools (obviously our North Farmington Raiders for example since we are Raiders ourselves) but it is worth mentioning the love we have for our Groves peeps as a whole – there’s just something about those Falcons!  Maya is our latest Falcon and you’ve already seen Maya a couple times on the blog since we posted a behind the scenes fisheye shot from her double spokesmodel session with Aria and she already appeared in the broadcasts that we posted with Aria’s highlights.  We will post those broadcast replays again here for those who have landed here for the first time.  But first let’s look at a couple photos of Miss Maya shall we?

Maya Mia!

We started out in the studio with the blue/grey fabric backdrop before we headed downtown to Detroit – here’s one of those:

Maya Mia

Love the color coordination here and Maya looks gorgeous!

We also have to say that Maya is a total character once you get to know her a little – she definitely had us cracking up.  Her mom Julie is pretty awesome too…  To prove we’re not kidding here’s a little example of “spokesmodel parkour” with Maya – hilarious….

Maya Mia

“Spokesmodel Parkour” lol

As you may have seen on Aria’s post we didn’t spend a ton of time in the studio and at this point we headed down to Detroit.  For Maya’s highlights we are going to focus on the Belt Alleyway – such a cool spot!  There is a lot to work with there starting with this little alleyway within the alleyway!

Maya Mia

So cool.

Now let’s get to our fun behind the scenes action – first with our 6 second Vine for your looping pleasure!

Next we have the “encore” presentations of our Periscope broadcasts from our Katch.me page.  You can download the Periscope app and follow us so you can come along for the ride on future photo sessions and lots of other fun stuff at @frameablefaces at this link!  First the broadcast from the studio:

Next we have the broadcast from the Detroit location!

Now let’s get to a couple more photos of our wonderful spokesmodel!

Maya Mia

Those eyes!!!

Okay we’ll leave you with this last one with one of the cool murals that are all over the place down there…

Maya Mia

Maya Mia!  Right?  Beautiful girl!  Okay so there you have it!  We are pretty excited to have Maya representing our studio as we keep rolling right along gearing up for the class of 2017 season!