You’ve heard the saying “Boys will be boys”? These guys were no exception! But they were completely and totally adorable! Lots of laughs and LOTS of personality!
You’ve heard the saying “Boys will be boys”? These guys were no exception! But they were completely and totally adorable! Lots of laughs and LOTS of personality!
If you’ve ever met Doug, you’ll know that he’s a total music freak. There are very few people our age that can even come close to his eclectic tastes and can have the level of music knowledge to have a conversation about it. And then came these guys…..
We ordered up a perfect day for this session with a family we’ve known for a long long time, and it was a blast! The boys had a lot of fun clowning around (which provided for some hilarious outtakes) and we had so much fun photographing them. We were actually the first people to randomly bump into them on an Ann Arbor sidewalk minutes after they got engaged years ago, and now they are a complete family!
We met the G family relatively recently when their oldest son became friends with our little guy. The boys became friends and then we followed suit pretty quickly afterwards!
Music plays a huge role here at Frameable Faces. As for me I’ve been a music fanatic my whole life. I grew up with brothers who were 10 and 8 years older than me so I was headbanging to Kiss, Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin when I was 5. I evolved and played the cello in my high school orchestra, and now I sing in a rock band. I listen to everything from hip/hop to jazz to classical and having a photography studio gives me a lab in which to actively practice my music snobbery on a daily basis and so I will share with you now a few ways which music plays a role at our studio. You are SO lucky to have access to these pearls…. hahaha…
Music Soothes The Savage Beast
For newborn sessions we turn the heat up, the lights down low, we lock the door to keep the studio exclusive to new mommy and baby (newborns come to the studio in the first two weeks after birth) and play classical music. While the theory about classical music somehow helping along the cognitive development of babies has been debunked, it can still help to soothe and make baby happy. A google search turned up this article from 2010 on the topic. Very often we start off with something simple like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and then we move on from there.
Music For Inspiration
Music is a very powerful tool to create a mood, and it helps to have a wide repertoire of musical knowledge so you can match the right genre for a haute session or a family session or a high school senior session, although the high school seniors usually know what they like and sometimes a website like Accuradio can come in handy if you don’t own the latest pop hits.
Music For Commercial Purposes
Here is where you need to be careful and follow the rules. We still see many new photographers who are starting out who use copyrighted music on their websites without permission which is a no-no. We have permission to use the song on our website, and when it comes to our promotional videos and slideshows that we actually sell as products we pay for the use of royalty-free music. You can find clips of wonderful professional music for your videos written especially for different kinds of sessions with services like Triple Scoop, Emotion, and Animoto.
Music For Everything Else
Music is always playing here. Even if there isn’t a session going on there is music playing just to edit or blog to. As I’m writing this I’m listening to Marty Willson-Piper – guitarist for The Church and one of my favorite artists. Good soothing jangly alternative rock. People expect to hear good music when they come here and it’s part of our culture. It’s fun! We like to share what we are listening to with the occasional tweet, and we even have a Pinterest board that focuses on the music we play here.
What is your favorite music to listen to and for what activities?
We follow most of our favorite vendors and partners on twitter and facebook and we are committed to buying local when we can, so when it dawned on us that we hadn’t given any online love to Camera Mart we decided to remedy that situation immediately. For starters, we decided to make a little impromptu and extremely amateurish video of our trip there yesterday to buy some grey paper for an on-location photo shoot for a dance studio (plus we think the grey will be great in the studio too). Caution: This was NOT done under professional video supervision and you should absolutely try this at home.
Camera Mart carries all the major brands of just about every type of equipment you need in the field of photography. They have a great selection of lenses, accessories, printing equipment, backdrop paper, camera bags, you name it…
It seems like everyone there has vast expertise not just on the products but the applications for the products beyond what you find in a product manual. They can advise on practical uses for your photography and your studio which makes a big difference when considering your purchase. Camera Mart also holds “demo days” at the store where you can come talk to representatives of most of the major brands they carry and attend various seminars to improve your knowledge.
Maybe most importantly they are a good old fashioned local merchant – we identify with that! Remember according to the 3/50 Project for every $100 spent in locally owned independent stores, $68 returns to the community through taxes, payroll, and other expenditures. If you spend that in a national chain, only $43 stays here, and if you spend it online nothing comes home.
So take our word for it – if you are looking for the best camera store in Metro Detroit, Camera Mart is the place to be!
We had our second annual high school senior spokesmodel party yesterday for the Frameable Faces class of 2013 and it was a blast! Our group of 11 had been looking forward to this for a while and to finally see all the spokesmodels in the studio together wearing Frameable Faces t-shirts and having fun is one of the real highlights of the year for us. Each year we try to take it up one more notch and we definitely did this year…
When the spokesmodels arrived yesterday all of their t-shirts were laid out on a table with their spokesmodel cards which they can pass out to their friends.
Once everyone arrived and introduced themselves to each other they started exchanging cards and I think some sort of card game broke out… hilarious!
Next was a special presentation – this year we added the spokesmodel video which includes video clips and images from each of the sessions – take a look!
Frameable Faces Spokesmodels Class of 2013!
After raucous applause we got down to the business of taking pictures for this year’s composite photo which will be revealed soon so stay tuned! We can’t wait to see the results of this – in the meantime here is last year’s from the class of 2012 which adorns one of our studio windows as a huge mural!
We were about to eat dinner next but everyone decided that they had to first put on our tutus for some bonus fun – what is it with seniors and tutus? Meanwhile one of our spokesmodels (Kyle) had to leave early leaving Donovan as the only boy – I don’t think he minded and things got pretty funny as you can see by clicking the link below… at this point Samantha hadn’t arrived yet so this is everyone minus Kyle and Samantha….
At that point we ate some pasta and salad for dinner, and then we finished off the night with the piéce de résistance – the Just Baked cupcake tower with a Frameable Faces cake on top!!! The Chubby Hubby, Red Velvet, and Grumpy Cake cupcakes were the first to go…. YUM!!!!
All in all it was a great night and we are so happy to have these amazing young people representing our studio! As someone said during the party, “Peace Love and Frameable Faces”!!!!
We’ve been photographing this family since before they were a family! M was one of Ally’s first subjects when she went back to school to study photography. They’re like family to us here and we always welcome a session with them whenever they ask. The fact that they’re insanely photogenic doesn’t hurt either!!
You should’ve heard the excitement when we got the call to photograph this sweet newborn! 10 days old at the session and she was pure sugar! Sweet, smushy and very cuddly!