There is always something special about our first official senior photo session of a new class – we love photographing seniors and the first session signals so many things for us – new friendships, a new summer, and tons of fun! Mikaela was no exception on all three fronts – great girl (and great mom Jill), great summer day, and lots of fun!
A Session of Firsts…
Not only was the session fun but it represented some true firsts for us. Not only the first senior of the season, but our first session on the ice, and our first time photographing in Royal Oak! But before we get to the ice and the outdoor fun let’s start in the studio briefly where we began the session:
Stunningly beautiful on the black background!
Mikaela Leads The Way…
Before we head out to the location sneak peeks let’s take a look at some of our fun behind the scenes action! First our 6 second vine for your looping pleasure!
Next we have the three part replay from our live Periscope broadcasts from the day. Mild disclaimer here – the second snippet when we are on the ice starts with me shaking my head… I didn’t start the broadcast that way but for some reason a piece of it was missing on the replay… Haha – ahhh technology! If you haven’t followed us yet on Periscope you can download the app and follow us at @frameablefaces at this link. Enjoy!
For now you can watch the replay on the YouTube channel HERE.
Okay now back to more awesome photos…
First we have a close up against a natural backdrop – like I said we had a perfect day!
….and a perfect model.
Next we have a photo from the ice. This was a fun challenge – ice is actually kinda slippery you know…. It was a little treacherous – I was out there with the off camera flash and Ally – well let’s say she’s been known to wipe out once or twice in her day… Okay so have I…. But we pulled it off and got some great results including this one:
Last but not least we have one more photo up close and personal with our wonderful first senior with a little city texture:
Those eyes!!! And there it is – we hope you enjoyed the highlights of our epic day with Mikaela – a fantastic way to kick off the new class!
Yes it’s been a while since I’ve posted a rant! Let’s do this….
Twitter Stickers
You may have seen Twitter’s recent announcement about the new “stickers” feature which allows you to add emojis and other things to your photos. Fortune points out the obvious play on Twitter’s part to keep up with Snapchat with a headline that gives the new feature a positive spin. Meanwhile the Wall Street Journal is completely and inexplicably oblivious to the chasing of snapchat with a slightly-less-than-flattering headline about Twitter…. Note in particular the second paragraph in the WSJ article about the other “communication” apps with stickers. C’mon…. Really? ZERO mention of Snapchat there? That’s amazing. I’m not totally sure how I feel about stickers yet since I haven’t used them but I have plenty of thoughts and you can look at this from a few different perspectives which we’ll get to.
A Couple Thoughts On Social Photography…
Meanwhile as photographers the ongoing debate of whether iPhone pics and the ease of entry is “ruining” the industry is an interesting one to us. This article on Popular Photography while not overtly addressing the big picture in that regard seems to come from that mindset, claiming that using Twitter stickers is a way to “completely ruin your photos”. I always find these types of opinions a little troubling. We’ve always embraced the idea that the more people appreciate everyday photography the more they will appreciate professional photography. We’ve always looked at Snapchat and Instagram as opportunities to have fun just like everyone else and we actually use them to highlight aspects of what we do at Frameable Faces. To call attention to stickers being a way to ruin pictures is silly to me. If you take a picture you don’t want to ruin with a sticker, then DON’T ADD A STICKER…… duh. Right? Maybe the fun you can have with stickers can help you build community to draw people in to see the stuff that is meant to stand on its own without the stickers. We actually covered this topic today on our photography show “The Photo Shop” on @ParachuteTV1 on Periscope if you’re interested in taking a look.
Social Media Apps chasing Other Social Media Apps…
So while the photography studio owner in me doesn’t have a problem with stickers, the social media guy in me might. Here’s what bugs me a little about them – keep in mind that I have not used them yet. This is an overall statement about social media platforms that I think applies here, even though I may be admitting soon that stickers are the greatest thing to happen to twitter (although I doubt it). I have no problem admitting when I’m wrong…
Here’s my issue. Each time a unique social media platform adds a feature to chase and become like another platform, it blurs the lines between platforms that make them cool. I like the different uses for each platform. I like the different etiquette and the different cultures of the different apps. Here are three other examples I thought were somewhere between silly and annoying when they rolled out and still do:
Facebook hashtags Good try Facebook but you are NOT twitter. Hashtags totally flopped on Facebook – they just really don’t belong there in my opinion.
Instagram video I believe Instagram did this as a reaction to Vine at the time. I can’t stand videos on Instagram. There was nothing “insta” about pausing while scrolling though the pics in the feed to watch a 15 second video and now the videos can be up to 60 seconds – good grief. I know not everyone agrees with me on this but it is my rant…
Periscope sketch Rolling out the ability to sketch on the screen while you’re broadcasting was, well…sketchy. I can only conclude that this was a way to chase Snapchat (?) even though the two are completely apples and oranges. Sonia Figueroa is the only scoper I’ve seen who consistently makes me smile when she draws hearts on the screen to “give them back” to her viewers (she’s one of my faves), but at a time when everyone was waiting for other more practical features this was a bit of an annoyance.
So there it is… had to do it. Thoughts? Are you using Twitter stickers? Can you think of other app fails from apps chasing apps? Please comment, share your thoughts, and share this post!
That’s usually how we start our morning show with those Larry Sanders Show / Howard Stern inspired words, and off we go….
The Doug and Ally Morning Show!
We have been broadcasting live on Periscope since April 2015 and somewhere along the way the “Doug&Ally Morning Show” became a thing. It wasn’t planned. It was early on an October morning, we weren’t doing much here at the studio and we thought it would be interesting to jump on Periscope and see who was up! We don’t officially open until 10:00 AM anyway. Turns out a lot of people were happy to see us on and someone made the comment that it’s like a morning show… We thought that sounded fun so we kept doing it and here we are 8 months later going strong with the morning show “officially” Tuesday through Fridays from sometime around 8:45 or 9ish until 10 or 10:30ish. It starts when it starts and it ends when it ends….
A Life Of Its Own…
Meanwhile many things have happened along the way that have become regular occurrences / features on the show… One of the most well known guests is an amazing caricaturist from the UK named Rich Nairn (@RichNairn on twitter and Periscope) who has been known to join the show and tweet doodles based on what’s happening. He sketches them in black and white but he made a color one which has become the official artwork for the show and will be available on T-Shirts (and maybe coffee mugs) very soon!
The phrase “You shut up, you shut up, and you shut up” has been an inside joke in Ally’s family which originated with her dad and it has become a common phrase on the show… haha! Notice the Periscope hearts going up the side to the right! Here are a couple more of his from the show….
One morning we were discussing some pretty chaotic events at home in the hours before we came to work. Ally woke up in the middle of the night with a spider crawling on her face, and I stepped in cat poop that one of the cats brought up from the basement litter box as a “trailer”…. Next thing we know Rich is commenting “tweet tweet” which usually means he’s posted a doodle and……
Here’s one more that we’ve featured before on the blog but it’s worth repeating. We had a photo session with a newborn baby and at one point during the session we wanted to get some naked baby photos which are precious…..when the following happened – watch the following vine:
So we were talking about this session and then Rich tweeted….
He really is amazing – he cranks these out in minutes…. Check out his fantastic work at his website The Artful Doodler!
Fun With The Feed!
I noticed that the thumbnails that show up in the Periscope news feed are sometimes amusing because they capture candid expressions of the person broadcasting and they refresh every few seconds, and so “Fun With The Feed” was born – with it’s own logo, jingle and everything! No one knows when one of these might happen (nor do they know if they’ll be the next victim…).
Here are a couple of our favorites…
@Amrit Singh has an awesome beard so we thought we’d help him show off all angles of it. Meanwhile the guy is awesome and has been doing some amazing humanitarian work in the UK helping with the refugee crisis. We met him in San Francisco in January at the Periscope Community Summit (now called Summit Live).
We also got our friend @Jaxsology with some awesome expressions – she is a really talented singer and a total comedian – one of our favorite scopers to be sure…
Ally and I do our cheesy intro ONCE per show followed by a tour of the studio where we talk about what we do and one of our Peri-friends Nelma – @BeachBabyC actually called in and narrated the tour on speaker phone one morning! Nelma has dubbed our living room “The Parlor” which is a great name for our little meeting area with our clients! We have call-ins to the show every now and then including a certain ridiculous telemarketing company who calls ALL THE TIME to try to give us great insurance rates on our 2013 Acura… Um, we’ve never had an Acura. After asking them a dozen times to be placed on their do not call list we decided to turn the tables… Take a look:
Many of our friends have their own special entrance when they show up on the show including Erick “@making_money23” Gary – all hell breaks loose when he shows up. There is no real rhyme or reason to who gets an intro or why – they just kinda happen…
So join us! There are plenty of features like “the coffee test” and spontaneous shenanigans that happen on the show and you can be a part of it just by tuning in and commenting! We have a ton of fun and we love our international community who joins us literally from all corners of the world (Russia, Malaysia, Israel, UAE, Brazil, Serbia, Japan, Australia, UK, Spain, France, Morocco, Venezuela, Turkey, India, Pakistan, Ukraine, Germany, The Netherlands, Nigeria, just to name some) every Tuesday through Friday morning (and sometimes Saturday) for the Doug&Ally Morning Show!!!
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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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You have probably seen the canvas of the beautiful little dancer on the wall by my desk in the studio if you’ve spent time here at Frameable Faces. That’s Elona – one of our favorite little cuties in Frameable Faces history! We love when she comes by to visit every now and then – she is one of the brightest kids we know and she never ceases to surprise me with her insights every time we have a conversation. So when we got the call that she would be coming to the studio for a photo session we got very excited indeed! She is always a delight to photograph!
Excitement For Elona
We love Elona’s mom Harolyn and her dad Ulrich – they’re awesome and we’ve photographed all of them before so we knew this would be great. Let’s start first with just Elona being Elona!
Such a cutie!!!
Next we have one of Elona being daddy’s girl with Ulrich…
Love it.
Now let’s take a look at some of our behind the scenes action from the session. First with our 6 second vine for your looping pleasure:
And now we have the extended replay of the live Periscope broadcast on our YouTube channel from the session! If you have not downloaded Periscope yet you can do so and follow us at @FrameableFaces at this link.
So much fun!
Okay let’s get back to a couple more photos from the session first with a classic mommy daughter image!
Beautiful girls!!!
And we will finish it off with one more of Elona blowing us a little kiss to end it!
Love that girl! And there you have it! You can see why we we had so much excitement for her return! We hope you enjoyed the highlights of our day with her and her parents!
When Dena came to the studio and we started chatting we discovered that we had a couple things in common. A couple mutual friends, sons similar ages – stuff like that. The usual fun stuff. So we got to discussing the session during the consultation with the usual details, what to wear, what color backdrops and those sorts of things. We looked at Saturday May 21st as the date for the session and she said that’s cool – it’s the day after their anniversary. We said cool – that’s two days after our anniversary! “Oh” she said “what anniversary is it? It’s our 20th!” We said “What? It’s our 20th too!!!” How cool! We got married on consecutive days in 1996!!! What a great connection – celebrating 20 years one day apart and then together the day after that for a family photo session! We knew this would be fun.
20 Years Of Happiness…
So Dena and Stephen came with their son Zak who we really liked – he seems like a great kid!!! Don’t be shocked if you see him again on this blog in the not-so-distant future… Let’s start with a photo of the happy family on the white background…
Good looking family huh?
Now let’s focus in on just the happy couple…
Before we get to the last two photos let’s take a look at our behind the scenes footage from the day! First with our fun little 6 second looping Vine:
Next we have the extended replay of the live Periscope broadcast from the session with a live audience! If you haven’t downloaded Periscope yet you can do so and follow us at @FrameableFaces at this link.
Okay we have a couple more photos to show – first one of a boy and his mommy! How sweet!
And lastly a dude and his truck!
And there you have it! We had a great time with these guys – on a similar path as ours! We hope you enjoyed the highlights of their session!
We are excited for you to meet Alan! We were certainly excited to meet him once we got the call that he would be “bringing” his family with him to the studio 5 days after he entered the world! We had a session scheduled for that Saturday afternoon but nothing in the morning so it worked out nicely. With newborn babies you have a short window where they are still newborn and the earlier they can come to the studio the better…
Alan came to the studio with his delightful parents Mallory and David and his older brother Eli who isn’t even 2 yet, but Eli was totally up for this. He was loving on his little brother and he looks like he’ll be a great older bro as you’ll see!
Meet Alan!
So let’s take a look at some photos! As usual we had the lights down low, the heat up high and the classical music playing to create a nice warm soothing environment, and Alan was a breeze to work with. Here he is!
So precious!
Before we look at a few more photos let’s look at our fun behind the scenes action from the morning! First with our 6 second looping Vine:
Brotherly love!!! These 2 were so wonderful to have here! Little one was 5 days old! ❤️ https://t.co/PHmUUjWCWt
Next we have the extended replay of the live Periscope broadcast from the session where you can get a feel for what the newborn sessions are like here. If you still haven’t downloaded Periscope yet you can do so and follow us at @FrameableFaces at this link.
Now let’s get back to a few photos including this one with some awesome brotherly love in black and white!
Next we have two more sweet photos of Alan – he was sleeping in both of them!
Love it with the baby blue hat.
So great. And that will do it for now! We hope you enjoyed meeting Alan – we certainly were honored to hang with him this early in his life!
We have known Riley since she was born – she’s actually my Goddaughter, so this was a special day for us. It was also special to have our amazing event photographer Angela there to capture the event – it gives us a warm and fuzzy feeling to have Angela there to ensure that our friends and family will have memorable photos from the event the way they deserve.
We’ll start with the traditional photos of Riley at the bimah and with her family.
Needless to say we’re a little biased but we love the way our Angela (we love to joke and call her “Nikon Girl” since she rocks a Nikon and Ally is Canon all the way) captures these moments and the composition of her photos! She’s awesome.
Next let’s bring in some photos with Riley and the fam… First with proud parents Todd and Monique gazing at her from afar! You’ve seen this type of photo on this blog before – it’s one of our favorites every time.
A classic black and white of Daddy’s girl….
And here’s the proud family with little brother Brennan and little sister Sage!
We think this girl was enjoying herself…
Kickin’ It With Riley!
Next we’ll move on to the party! First we have the bat mitzvah girl getting ready for the bash… love these little details looking over Monique’s shoulder with Riley’s reflection in the mirror…
Ready to celebrate!
The party was awesome and “Kickin’ It With Riley” was the theme since she is a soccer player, and I even captured a shot with my iPhone behind the scenes of Angela at work!
We love Angela! Here’s a quick selfie…
And here is a fantastic photo we’ll leave you with as Riley’s friends and family lift her up to celebrate her as she surveys the room during the traditional hora dance!
An awesome way to close out the highlights of an an awesome day! We hope you enjoyed these photos of Riley’s special event!
I am NOT a professional photographer. Let’s get that straight – and I will not be any time soon. I have always loved photography, always had a camera and have always had a nice amateur eye. So being in the photography business with my amazing professional photographer wife Ally has given me a chance to be involved in it, and to play around with the behind the scenes photos when I’m creating content to promote what we do.
iPhoneography…
Meanwhile the cameras on iPhones and smartphones in general have become better and better – the quality is quite amazing for everyday amateur use and the tools and filters let you have a lot of fun. We’ve always said that the more people appreciate everyday photography the more they will appreciate professional photography, and we embrace the technology and use it to highlight the photos we take for our clients.
To that end I’ve become fond of the Panorama option on the iPhone, and I made sure to grab a pano of each spokesmodel session for the class of 2017. I thought maybe these could make a fun blog post and so here we go…..! These are unfiltered by the way with the exception of Ally brightening one or two of them.
2017 Spokesmodel Panoramas!
Lily
With Lily we went to Heritage Park in Farmington Hills and I got Ally here in action with Lily under this pretty trellis.
Haven
Haven rocked it in the studio on this purple background with the light wood floor – I got up high for this angle…
Nick
Bending an alleyway in Birmingham as Nick mimics Ally’s pose…
Lacey
Our Lacey at Belle Isle where if you look really closely you can see the Detroit skyline in the distance to the right …
Ilyssa
Ilyssa with the blue on the blue door in Pontiac on a cold and overcast day…
Marie
Marie lounges on the “throne” in the studio on the red background and the dark wood floor…
Ben
Ben chilling on a footbridge – another bend in reality…
Aria and Maya
Aria and Maya go back to back in downtown Detroit with the awesome murals of “The Belt“.
Kinda neat huh? We hope you enjoyed these class of 2017 spokesmodel panoramas! Let us know what you think!
Jeralyn made her highly anticipated debut at the studio with her parents Nick and Jen, who you might remember from this one of a kind story we told you about recently… And what an eventful and amazing photo session this was! We are so excited to present these to you! Our story with these guys has been truly special since that first phone call.
Jeralyn Makes Her Debut…
Is there anything more amazing and perfect than a newborn baby? She’s so beautiful! It’s so nice when you can get your model to sleep for a bit, so we turn the lights low, the heat up and we put on a little classical music to help create a nice comforting mood.
We had a few backdrops and setups planned for this session, and next we moved to some pink fluffy awesomeness so Jeralyn could open her eyes and stretch out a little, floating on her pink cloud.
Before we move to our next couple shots let’s look at a little of our fun behind the scenes action and a bonus poop heard round the world – LITERALLY…
I was documenting some of the session for snapchat – that day we were featured doing a snap swap takeover of the Summit Live snapchat account. Both our profile and the Summit profile has worldwide followings. I hit the record button and I swear it was like it was a poop remote control because Nick and Jen were holding a naked Jeralyn when she let loose! So hilarious… You can see it in this 6 second looping Vine…
Wait, we’re not done. The next morning we were laughing about this on “The Doug & Ally Morning Show” we do on Periscope Tuesday through Friday mornings and Rich Nairn who has done the artwork for the soon-to-be-ready morning show t-shirts was in the broadcast. You have to visit Rich’s website – he’s a genius! When he saw the footage he was inspired to do a “doodle” which he does frequently… Here we see Jeralyn propelling herself through the air!!! HAHA!
How funny is that?
Next we have the replay of our live Periscope broadcast from the session for your extended viewing pleasure. Needless to say our female viewers were gushing over Jeralyn! If you haven’t downloaded Periscope yet you can get it and follow us at @FrameableFaces at this link:
Now let’s get back to a couple more amazing photos of Jeralyn:
Love the black and white with her eyes open!
And one more with a beautiful sari for this photo which is actually a composite (which is the safe way to execute this pose). What a great photo!
And there you have it – our wonderful continuing story of Nick, Jen and now Jeralyn! We hope you enjoyed the highlights from her debut!
Nick is next up in our Class of 2017 blog posts, and yes he’s the subject of the last of these, but he’s far from the least! This guy is great – bursting with personality and we liked him the minute we met him. Funny enough we ended up sealing the deal with him representing our studio as a spokesmodel when Ally and I went out to eat at Social Kitchen and Bar in Birmingham – Nick was the host that night and we didn’t even know it! He was the first person to greet us when we walked in (we had already met with him and his mom Sally)! Everything about that night was pretty cool as a side note – the restaurant has owners who are parents of one of our seniors, three of our former seniors work there, and now we’ve got Nick! You should eat there – it’s awesome.
Nick Is Next…
But back to Nick. This guy showed up with what seemed like a whole closet of clothes (according to him only a third of his wardrobe) and let’s just say the kid has style! We joked that day and since that ya gotta have options! Lol… Let’s start with a formal shot on the black background:
What a stud.
At this point we headed outside because we wanted to get some variety in Birmingham, but before we look at those let’s see some behind the scenes action – first with our 6 second Vine for your looping pleasure…
Now for your extended viewing if you like here are the replays of our live Periscope broadcasts from our day. If you haven’t downloaded Periscope yet you can do so and follow us at @FrameableFaces at this link.
Okay now for the location photos… Shades, sun, flowers, steps, casual pose – cool!
And more steps….but a totally different aesthetic….
And we’ll leave you with this one – we like cityscapes with brick, alleys and the like!
Another awesome spokesmodel and another awesome session! We may still have some fun recaps coming about our Class of 2017 team, but even more exciting we’ll have new seniors to present soon – including a new round of posts featuring this awesome crew of 9 as they return for their own senior pictures!
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The phrase “You shut up, you shut up, and you shut up” has been an inside joke in Ally’s family which originated with her dad and it has become a common phrase on the show… haha! Notice the Periscope hearts going up the side to the right! Here are a couple more of his from the show….
