When you Google the meaning of a Ruby the first thing you see is that it’s a “high energy stone” which makes sense for this Ruby because she is comfortable on a stage. And we’re comfortable with this Ruby because for starters she’s a legacy Frameable senior here – we met her a couple years ago when her sister Zoe was here. Besides, she’s got that hint of snark that we love, and we had fun with her on her senior session as we officially kicked off the new class of 2018 sessions!
Rolling With Ruby…
We rolled down to Heritage Park with Ruby on a very muggy and warm day – but it was dry which was all that mattered since there was a brief downpour overhead at the studio right before we headed out. Ruby’s mom Elyse joined us as well and we love her too – actually you’ll see her doing a little “guest hosting” of the behind the scenes livestreams a bit further down this post – a reprise since she did that two years ago too! So now let’s focus on Ruby who looked great and did a fantastic job for these photos!
Love that photo! Great one to start with…
As mentioned we also have plenty of behind the scenes fun – starting with a YouTube Live broadcast getting ready to shoot at Heritage Park… You can SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube channel here!
Here is one more in the black dress close up – LOVE:
Just gorgeous…
We went with a couple outfit changes on location and we have more behind the scenes for you this time from Facebook Live:
Let’s take a look at one more by the barn door (Ruby’s choice on location) before we head back to the studio for a studio shot…
Fabulous!
At this point we were happy to get in the car, blast some A/C and get back to the studio where we got a few shots on the black background like this one here:
And there you have it! The Class of 2018 is officially underway! Ruby led us off in style 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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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 has been a year of many changes for us here at Frameable Faces and this story is a big part of it. Personal change with our daughter Lacey going off to college in a week (!!!) and our switch to a mostly plant based lifestyle, along with professional change with a bit of diversification for the studio with Ally teaching photography classes, adding more focus to photo restoration to complement our portrait work and me taking on a couple of social media clients as well. It’s all great and exciting stuff, and this latest opportunity seems to be a natural extension, or you might even say a culmination of all of that… Introducing Sheago!
Mamatuga Baby Rub and handmade soap!
Introducing Sheago!
The story goes like this in a nutshell: Anoa Gollman contacted us saying she needed some product photos on pretty short notice for a website. So she came to the studio and Ally knocked out the photos for her. Product photos can be complicated from a lighting standpoint sometimes, but the products generally cooperate. Haha… As we got to talking to Anoa she told us the story of her company and how she sold her products in Whole Foods and Plum Market for years but that she was moving the company to a direct sales model which Ally has had plenty of experience with. But this was a case where Ally connected with the owner of the company and they just hit it off. Anoa let Ally try some of the products and Ally fell in love. Remember when I mentioned how we’ve gone largely plant based this year (me vegan, Ally vegetarian)? Well this is directly from the Sheago website:
“Beautiful skin is developed and sustained by maximizing two quintessential components of skin care: hydration (moisture) and nutrients (vitamins).
Our products are food and plant based. So, we start and finish with fruits, vegetables, flowers, herbs, seeds and nuts to make our skin creams, after shower splashes, shampoos, conditioners, hair butters and soaps. We are unique in that we do not use alcohol, mineral oil, petroleum, parabins or artificial colors in our skin care, even though it is the base of most lotions. Our vision was and is to create nutritious products for the skin and hair so that your body eats a healthy meal every day.
Remember, skin and hair care should be “wholistic”. We are not selling snake oil and we are not magicians. We encourage you to also eat healthy, well balanced meals, drink lots of water and exercise! But, proper skin care is the foundation to uncovering a glowing, new you.
So, come on. You have nothing to lose and only beautiful skin to gain. Try Sheago products today.”
Clientele and Partnership collide…
Sometimes what a client brings your way just makes too much sense not to partner together on. So we are in. And we’re excited. Let Ally know if you are interested in these fantastic products. You can get them from Ally and be a part of the #SheagoMovement! Let’s take a look at a few more:
Natural Bath Salts and handmade soaps!
The idea of only putting things on your skin that are made of ingredients you would also ingest is really appealing to us. All natural!
Body butters, After shower body oils, All natural toners, Day Creams, and Healing Ointments
There’s a full line of hair care products as well – many more items where these came from that you can see at the website or just ask Ally…
Dead Sea Mud and Detoxifying Black Soap
So there you go! We are thrilled to be introducing Sheago Cosmetics and to be a part of the #SheagoMovement! Ingredients which are good for your inside, moisturization which is good for your outside – have you fed your skin its vegetables today?
Equipment used:
These are our affiliate links to the products we used on this session:
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!
Photo Restoration is one of our favorite things to do – to help people restore and reclaim their history! We also like the stories behind the photos we get to restore, and in this case Jason shared some background on the photo he sent us of his grandparents which was pretty badly damaged. Jason (aka @LionCrownz) found us by tuning in to our Periscope broadcasts and you can join in on the fun there as well by following us at @frameablefaces at this link, or you can connect with us and check out the broadcasts on Twitter as well!
Jason’s Grandparents Restored!
In this case Jason shipped us the photo which as you will see was in pretty bad shape. We scanned it – here’s what it looked like:
So that’s the “before”. You can see that it was basically in two pieces with some fading and plenty of creases…
Now take a look at the “after”…..
Cleaned up nicely right?
Let’s check in with Jason as he gave us the background on the photo.
FF: Who are the people in the photo?
Jason: The people in the photo are my grandparents!
FF: What can you tell us about their story and/or your relationship with them?
Jason: Their story is they met in high school and were high school sweethearts. My grandparents got divorced when my mother was in grade school and I really did not get to know my grandfather until I was 14 but that was over the phone. He was really absent from our lives for the most part. I remember our conversations on the phone and how kind he was. He always liked to pick and make fun and ask if I had a girlfriend. I know my mother and I both were very grateful to have him back in our lives but shortly after he came back into our lives he was gone again because he had passed away of a heart attack at the age of 55.
FF: What does having this photo restored mean to you?
Jason: Having this photo restored to me means a lot because we do not have many photos of my grandfather and having it restored makes me feel closer to him because I still think of him often even though I did not really know him that well. So it’s like a small piece of him is still with us even if it is just in a photo.
It’s that last part that makes us happy – it means a lot to Jason and it means a lot to us to help people in this way! We hope you enjoyed seeing Jason’s grandparents restored!
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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!
I got a phone call from Carlos looking to set up a photo session on pretty short notice…..for his twin one month old boys! I knew Ally would be pretty excited since we’ve had plenty of babies in the studio and plenty of twins, but no twin babies! We had time available the following day which was exactly 30 days from Harrison and Henry’s birth so it seemed like the planets were aligning! And what a session! Are twin boys double trouble to photograph? HECK NO – they’re double FUN!!!
Double Fun with Harrison and Henry!
Carlos and Gina came to the studio well prepared with some monogrammed burp cloths for the boys which we’ll get to. In the meantime for one month old babies it’s hit or miss on how easy it will be to get them to sleep which always makes for easier posing and photographing. So with twins this was somewhat unchartered territory! Indeed, they were not ready to nap when they got here so we had to wait it out a bit…. a little classical music, some low light, some high heat and an hour or two of patience and we were in business!!! We always block off two hours but allow for cushion on the back end with little babies just in case we need the extra time. So without further adieu, let’s meet the boys!
We’ll start with the individual shots – first of Henry:
How great is he?
And here’s Harrison…
Okay how awesome is the tongue…!
We also have some fun behind the scenes action for you – first with the replay of the Periscope broadcast – you can join in the fun and follow us on Periscope at @frameablefaces at this link, or you can just check out the broadcasts from twitter here.
And here is an amazing shot from that part of the session that will definitely make you smile….
Caption that one however you like. 🙂
We have one more broadcast replay this time from Facebook Live and this one was shared and liked quite a bit…
We’ll leave you with one more photo from the session with the monogrammed burp cloths from the Facebook broadcast:
Double fun indeed!!!! Double adorable, double delicious – the list goes on and we hope you enjoyed the highlights of our day with Harrison and Henry!
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!
Recently I wrote an article here on the blog comparing and contrasting live streaming platforms to help people make some informed choices on which platform to consider between Facebook Live and Periscope for different types of strategies. It’s a solid piece if I do say so myself and I enlisted 4 people in the social media / entrepreneurial game I respect to include their take. That article is still on point and relevant, but this is basically a part 2 digging into a main advantage Facebook Live has for local brands.
I’m seeing more and more jarring evidence lately that points to Facebook Live as the best opportunity for small businesses and especially brick and mortars that operate mostly on a local level like us. Now to be clear, here at Frameable Faces we are NOT planning on “switching” to Facebook Live from Periscope overall. Periscope is still our first love for live streaming and our favorite especially for our Doug & Ally Morning Show that we start most of our days with. We don’t have plans to change that. But something happened this past Saturday that cannot be ignored as an obvious example of why Facebook Live is starting to pull ahead for our strategy as a photography studio as opposed to morning show hosts.
We broadcasted parts of an amazing photo session with twin babies…
Saturday we did a photo session here in the studio for twin one month old babies. The article with sneak peeks from that session will be available here on the blog soon. We did a bit of live streaming of the session and it was just cuteness overload! We’ve had plenty of babies in the studio and plenty of twins, but never twin babies! We started with Periscope and we even mentioned to our Periscope community earlier in the morning that we might go live in the afternoon with twin babies.
Periscope Results:
We Periscoped for 13 minutes and 13 seconds. 68 people watched it live. Everyone was genuinely enjoying it. People were commenting. Since the broadcast ended 39 people have watched the replay (7 more since the screen shot below) – most replay views on Periscope happen within 24 hours of a broadcast on the app. This is all fine – it was a fun scope and over 100 people got to enjoy it – nothing wrong with that at all! Here are the analytics provided by Periscope:
One more sidenote – as you can see above the thumbnail (the representative image from the broadcast) is me with a relatively silly face. NOT the amazingly cute twin babies from the broadcast. I have pointed out how important it is to be able to choose a custom thumbnail to the Periscope team but they haven’t made this a priority.
Facebook Live Results:
We then went live on Facebook Live right after the Periscope broadcast for 8 minutes and 29 seconds. There were maybe 5 – 10 people who tuned in to watch live. There weren’t many live comments if any… Granted we don’t broadcast on Facebook Live often or at regular times which can contribute to a small live audience, plus there are delays on the comments and it’s not as fun of an experience on Facebook. BUT….. I tagged Carlos (the dad) in the post who then shared the post and tagged me and his wife Gina in the post (he only tagged me and not Ally and me him and not Gina because he and I did the FB friending exchange) and then I went back and tagged Ally in the post, and then all his friends started to see the post in their feed, and a few of them shared the post, and then more people saw the post, and more and more people liked the post, which Facebook likes, so Facebook showed it to more people, and then a few more of those people shared the post, and so more people saw the post and they liked (and loved, and haha’d, and wow’d) the post and commented on the post and Facebook liked that even more so Facebook showed it to even more people and pretty soon the video had reached 3648 people and 2129 people watched it. Oh and there’s definitely a chance some people watched it because I chose an image of Harrison and Henry surrounded by Ally and their parents to represent the broadcast as you can see below (as opposed to just my face with a weird expression which I didn’t choose).
When a Periscope broadcast ends it just sort of fades into the distance of the feed of ended broadcasts… When a Facebook broadcast ends that’s when it starts to get going if it’s worthy of watching. In the case of Harrison and Henry boy did it get going…. let’s look at a few more stats which Facebook provides in about 200 different ways, sliced and diced – more information than you would know what to do with about the demographics of who watched – age, gender and a lot more. With Periscope you have to use third party apps like Fullscope or Eggdrp (both great by the way) to get any analytics worth a darn.
Now check THIS out. Here’s a visual representation of the viral nature of a really good Facebook Live video that I described in my run on sentence above (which was done purposely for emphasis haha).
This broadcast was the only one in the time frame of this graph. Note how the views climbed on the third and fourth days… the broadcast was on Saturday May 20th, but on Tuesday May 23rd 653 people watched it! You can see it spreading and the buzz growing! But wait there’s more….
Remember the emphasis in the title of this article is on local brands right?
This graphic shows me that 70.3% of the total minutes viewed of this video were viewed in MICHIGAN. Our studio is IN Michigan. This is the core of our target market for studio portraits from a practical standpoint. That’s who we’re reaching on Facebook – lots of potential clients who are friends of Carlos & Gina and friends of friends of Carlos & Gina. We have a physical storefront where we take pictures and it’s in West Bloomfield, MICHIGAN. On Periscope our audiences are 10% from Michigan at best and that’s probably very generous, not that there’s any data anywhere that tells me this conclusively. Now once again – that’s fine – we love our international community and the friends we’ve made around the world on Periscope – that’s part of what’s amazing about Periscope. We’ve traveled to photograph people we’ve met on Periscope which has been amazing and we’re even expanding our photo restoration business to clients on Periscope which isn’t bound by geography.
But if I’m advising a new local brick and mortar store on where to start broadcasting live and build community to get more people showing up at their door and becoming clients, I’m recommending Facebook first. I’m not saying don’t do Periscope per se, but if I’m picking one it’s Facebook. If I’m recommending a platform primarily to see the world, and have an amazing time for entertainment purposes and making new friends from everywhere, I’m still recommending Periscope.
Since we started broadcasting on Facebook (which we made a part of our strategy well after Periscope) we have more people saying “Hey I saw you guys doing one of your live uh…video things – like online! Looks like fun!” And I always would ask “Oh cool! On Periscope?” and they would say “On what?” and then I would say “Oh wait maybe you saw us on Facebook (remembering that yes we go live on Facebook now too)” and then they would say “RIGHT! Yeah I saw you on Facebook!” You know why they say that? Because EVERYONE IS ON FACEBOOK. Some are on Twitter where you can also catch Periscope broadcasts but not nearly as many and fewer still are actually on the Periscope app. When we started broadcasting on Periscope on March 31st, 2015 it wasn’t long before we were sure that within a year or two everyone would be on Periscope because it’s that amazing. Well we still think it’s amazing – we were right about that. But shockingly to us most people walking around on the street – the people we want to walk into our mall and into our store – yeah those people – still don’t know what it is.
These two broadcasts of the twins were done back to back, one right after the other with the same subject. Vastly different results. Results that favor Facebook Live for small local brick and mortar businesses. It’s the most obvious example I have, and while one example doesn’t necessarily prove anything, I can tell you that the conclusions I’m drawing here are not just based on this example alone…
Food for thought. For you live streamers – what do you think? There are more layers to this topic to be sure but I’d love to hear your thoughts…
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Frameable Faces Photography
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Doug Cohen provides social media training and services and can be reached at the following:
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!
Not that he would be anyway for any reason, but no – Joseph is no joke! The guy called and scheduled his senior session himself – he came in earlier in the school year to do his yearbook headshot just under the deadline and we planned out the rest together. So right off the bat he showed some responsibility that not all high school seniors display. Plus he’s just a soft spoken but plenty cool and confident dude and we enjoyed hanging out with him a lot.
Calm, Cool & Confident – no joke…
We started out in the studio and went with the blue / grey background which we really like. Here’s an up close and personal shot of our guy in a snappy casual look:
Now just because Joseph handled the plans for this session doesn’t mean that his mom Eleanor wasn’t involved – she came on the session and she got into a couple shots! She’s a sweetheart and here’s a nice one of senior and mom together!
How cute are they?
Okay now it was time to head outside for some location photos at Heritage Park in Farmington Hills, and we did a little behind the scenes on Facebook Live while we were there…
It was a little chilly but the lighting was fine and we got a couple of great photos… First on the rocks – and we’re digging the pink shirt!
We’ll leave you with one more against the picket fence – you can see the confidence with this young man!
And there you have it – Joseph is certainly no joke and we were glad to have him at our studio! We hope you enjoyed the highlights of our day with him and Eleanor!
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?
**********************************************
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’re dwelling on Dani here, and we may just have saved the best for last here with our 2018 spokesmodel crew… Okay well maybe that’s not totally the case because we love this whole crew so much, but Dani is awesome and we had already hung out with her for dinner at Chipotle before we photographed her so that just proves already how special this girl is to us!
Dani is another one of these superseniors who is sweet, smart and seriously focused on all the right things. She’s a well-rounded student athlete and such a sweetheart – and she comes with a great mom too! Diana is really great and she came on Dani’s session with us. Needless to say we had a blast!
Dwelling On Dani…
We spent a brief time in the studio first on the black background with this super cute outfit:
Love it!
After just a few shots in the studio we headed out on location to the West Bloomfield trail network and a couple of different nature preserves since the conditions were really nice and we fired up some live video for some behind the scenes fun – first on Periscope and if you want to download the app and follow us there at @FrameableFaces you can do it at this link. If you want to just follow our broadcasts from Twitter you can do that too here.
Here’s a full length photo outside – Dani was killin’ it!
We also need to give a shout out to Jordyn Popour from Detroit Glam for the fantastic job on Dani’s makeup, and we will be offering Jordyn’s services on sessions this year so ask us about it when you book your session!
Let’s take a look at one more behind the scenes broadcast from Dani’s session shall we? This time from Facebook Live…
Here’s one more sneak peek from the session for y’all….
So there you have it – dwelling on Dani was well worth it, and we can’t wait to get her back in front of Ally’s camera for her senior pictures along with the rest of the class of 2018! We’ll leave you with the fun Snapchat story from the day!
Equipment used:
These are our affiliate links to the products we used on this session:
**********************************************
Frameable Faces Photography
**********************************************
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?
**********************************************
Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World! Click here!
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Love that photo! Great one to start with…
Just gorgeous…
Random Twitter thoughts:
We also need to give a shout out to Jordyn Popour from 
Let’s take a look at one more behind the scenes broadcast from Dani’s session shall we? This time from 