Tag Archives: west bloomfield photographer

Twin Sister Senior Time – First With Tierra!

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We love twins – no really we love twins!  They have a special bond and senior pictures are so much fun and such a big milestone.  So when any senior comes in for pictures it’s a big deal and it’s one of the things we love most about our “jobs”, but with twins we get to spend a full 5+ hours with them which gives us a window into their relationship that makes for a memorable day every time.

Twin Sister Senior Time…

Tierra and Cierra were no exception, and they are North Farmington Raiders to boot so as Raiders ourselves we were pretty excited for this session.  Beautiful girls, beautiful mom and they were a blast to be with!  So today we are going to feature photos of Tierra along with a guest appearance by Cierra and then tomorrow we’ll flip it!  Let’s start in the studio with Tierra on the black backdrop…

Twin Sister Senior

With this shot we actually can’t remember for sure but I think we had the fan going on Tierra’s hair but only slightly – just to give it a little lift.  Gorgeous…

While we’re on the black background let’s bring in Cierra for a black and white close crop of these beauties together!

Twin Sister Senior

Next we’ll take a look at Tierra on the red couch against the new red background – this is the first time we’ve done this pairing and we love the result:

Twin Sister Senior

Next we’ll take a look at the highlights of Tierra’s shoot on our behind the scenes vine:

Let’s head outside…

We had a perfect day for this session which was nice and we went to one of our favorite nature preserves for these next couple photos:

Twin Sister Senior

And we’ll end for today on this one…

Twin Sister Senior

So there you have it – twin senior sister time part one!  We hope you enjoyed Tierra’s pictures and be sure to return tomorrow for part two with Cierra!

Playing It Kool With Kyliel On His Senior Session!

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Playing it kool with Kyliel is just what we did when he came to the studio for his senior pictures.  He is a unique kid in a good way – soft spoken, plenty of style and a great look.  He came in with his grandmother who is just a sweetheart and she told us his story – this young man has overcome plenty of obstacles and for his family they look at him as a real life Superman!  Indeed, Superman’s given name by his parents on Krypton was Kal-El – pretty close right?  With Kyliel we planned an all-studio session which is nice.  We’ve explained this before, but it bears repeating that while the majority of our senior sessions combine indoor and on-location photos, the sessions which are all one or the other are a nice change of pace because we get to thoroughly explore one or the other.

So let’s get to our kool session with Kyliel!

Red hair, red background – exploding off the screen…

So first we pulled out our new red background which we have pretty much been obsessed with since we got it.  Kyliel has great hair – just a great red tint that looks so cool and we love this shot:

Playing It Kool

Kool – right?  Love it.  Next we went for the formal GQ look which Kyliel rocked quite well…

Playing It Kool

Let’s pause for a second to go behind the scenes of the shot above with a vine of the action…

Playing It Kool – real Kool

I love what Ally did with this next shot…  it speaks for itself.

Playing It Kool

Lastly we’ll leave you with one more as Kyliel represents Laker Nation with his West Bloomfield gear!

Playing It Kool

So now you understand what I mean when I say we were playing it kool with Superman Kyliel!  We loved his session and we hope you enjoyed the highlights!

We Are Zo Crazy About Our Spokesmodel Zoe!

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Zo… yes we are crazy about our spokesmodel Zoe!  We did not know Zoe before this Spring but she came highly recommended from a few different people and we connected with her and her mom Elyse right away!  We had quite a lot of fun on her spokesmodel session and Ally and Zoe were doing the wobble in the studio by the end of it.  Yes, the wobble (you may have seen it on our Snapchat story and we actually uploaded it to the Facebook page).  That was a first!

To Birmingham…

So let’s get to the session – we met on location in Birmingham where we were joined by a swan, a random somewhat creepy guy and some bright light that was a little challenging on Zoe’s eyes.  Through it all Zoe rocked her session and we love the results, not to mention an amazing black and blowy shot, but we’ll get to blowy Zoe later.  First let’s start on location:

Spokesmodel Zoe

The light was mostly diffused under a cloudy sky on this day which is great to work with.  Sometimes if you’re facing a certain way the glare can still be tough on the eyes but that wasn’t a problem until we tried to get a shot by the waterfall towards the end of the location part of the session.  For these first few spots we were okay and Zoe didn’t have any problem – as I said before she was killin’ it!  Love this next one….

Spokesmodel Zoe

One more location shot with this close crop on the bridge…

Spokesmodel Zoe

Now let’s take a look at our behind the scenes vine of our day:

Back to the studio…

In the vine you can see Zoe during the black and blowy set up, and we will leave you with one of those:

Spokesmodel Zoe

Fantastic!  So, YES we are crazy about this girl!  We are very excited that she’s on our team and we hope you enjoyed these highlights of her spokesmodel session!

Emma Emanates Awesomeness On Her Spokesmodel Session!

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Emma emanates awesomeness – plenty of it in fact in these photos from her spokesmodel session!  But first before we get to them can we talk?  Emma followed us and we followed back on Instagram a year or two ago and we admired this beautiful and talented dancer from afar for a while before we ever met her.  She was definitely on our radar for representing our studio and we needed someone at West Bloomfield High School so we invited her over with her mom to meet.  We fell for her the moment she walked in!  She’s just one of those people who lights up a room when she enters it.  She’s funny, cool, smart, talented and nice – just the total package, and her mom is great too so we were excited to get her on board!

Oops I Did It Again…

So this may sound familiar, but with the last spokesmodel, Chase, we forgot Reflecto when we left and had to go back to get him.  Well this time we made a car swap in the morning and I forgot the camera was in the other car….  UGH.  We had to go back for the camera, and of course Reflecto was ready to tweet about it again.

Emma Emanates

Emma Emanates…

Okay now let’s get to the photos!  Our first photo is the second to feature a spokesmodel with a headband of some sort in the current class, and we love the look!

Emma Emanates

Next we headed over to one of our favorite outdoor props for this photo…

Emma Emanates

Ally had trouble narrowing down photos from Emma’s session because she was able to hold poses so perfectly.  This session was a first for us as well because we broadcast portions of it live on Periscope.  It was really cool – one of our other spokesmodels tuned in to see what we were up to along with viewers in Paris, Italy, and Great Britain!  I used a piece of the broadcast for our behind the scenes vine which I shared on my last blog post about Periscope.  If you don’t know what it is my article will provide all you need to know so far.

As it turned out if we hadn’t had our little camera delay we likely wouldn’t have met Gordie – that fun pup who jumped in for a couple shots.  We found out that he did some modeling of his own back in his day!

Back to the studio

As you can see in the vine we used our new red background which we are loving so far.  Here’s a photo with the red:

Emma Emanates

Lastly we’ll finish with Emma in this fun hat in black and white – love this one!

Emma Emanates

So there you have it!  Emma emanates awesomeness!  We hope you enjoyed these highlights and we are looking forward to getting her in front of Ally’s camera again later this year!

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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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The Thrill Of The Chase – And His Spokesmodeling Session!

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How’s that for a little play on words?  We are indeed thrilled for this Chase to represent our studio as a spokesmodel for the class of 2016.  Ally has known Chase’s mom going back to high school which always makes it nice too.  Chase seems like a really good kid and he’s an enterprising young man already with a business with a couple friends – PWR Detroit!  Check out the website and their bracelets made from beads from around the globe, and you’ll notice Chase wearing them in the pictures below.  Speaking of pictures let’s take a look at some from his awesome session shall we?

We started out on location or should I say we “false started”…  I left Reflecto (our snarky location reflector) at the studio in the other car so we had to run back for “him”.  Of course he tweeted about it…  Plus it was my fault and Ally could have easily thrown me under the bus but she didn’t.

Thrill Of The Chase

To Heritage Park we go…

Okay let’s try that again.  First we went on location to Heritage Park in Farmington Hills – one of our favorite spots.  There was a new structure there that immediately caught our eye.

Thrill Of The Chase

Pretty cool right?  Next we hit the stone wall which is one of our go-to spots.  Chase was great to work with and here he’s showing off the PWR Detroit gear and bracelets!

Thrill Of The Chase

Our last shot on location was on a little viewing platform at the end of a trail that we like.  There is much to discover at Heritage Park!

Thrill Of The Chase

Let’s now take a look at our behind the scenes vine of the day before we head back to the studio for one more:

Okay now back to the studio for this one on the grey:

Thrill Of The Chase

And that’ll do it for now with Chase.  We hope you enjoyed these highlights from our day with him!

Jesse’s March Madness Was Truly A Blast!

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March Madness usually means a basketball tournament, but in this case it meant Jesse’s Bar Mitzvah!  Since we started photographing events with our fabulous event photographer Angela, Ally and I have attended a couple of them as guests which is a special treat for us on a couple levels.  For starters it’s special to share in a celebration with our friends, but to watch Angela at her craft is very rewarding as well because it confirms for us why we are so proud to have her.  We knew we had something special with her from the first day she walked into our studio when she was still a photography student several years ago.  She’s grown into a true pro and we are excited to showcase some of her work here!

Let’s start on the bimah

We have known Jesse since he was born and I have known his parents Noah and Ellen for 23 years going back to our days at the University of Michigan.  They are a great family and you can see the joy they had on the occasion of Jesse’s Bar Mitzvah!  First Angela focused on the service part of the event at the Temple with photos of the family in the sanctuary:

March Madness

March Madness

March Madness

March Madness

Now let the “March Madness” begin!

The theme of the party was #JessesMarchMadness and people were having fun Instagramming with the hashtag which was displayed on the big screen, but when Jesse led members of the U of M marching band into the room and a rousing chorus of “The Victors” was played, well – things got kicked up a notch for sure.  Jesse wore a GoPro to record the party and it was definitely a day to remember!

March Madness

March MadnessHail to Jesse (and The Victors)!!!

March Madness

March Madness

March Madness

March Madness

We hope you enjoyed these highlights of Jesse’s March Madness – his Bar Mitzvah was truly a special day!

Meet The Great Gabby – Our New Class Of 2016 Spokesmodel!

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Time to present another North Farmington Raider spokesmodel for the class of 2016 – The Great Gabby!!!  She’s not just “great” in general, but she’s cute, nice, smart and fun and this is not the first time she has been in front of Ally’s camera, as she made a little cameo in her sister Rachel’s senior pictures a year ago.

First in the studio…

So we started in the studio with Gabby and while we did some of our favorite shots on the black background we also broke out our metallic silver and our new grey fabric and played with those a little.  Let’s start with the grey and the red couch for this fun and playful shot:

Great Gabby

Nice!  Gabby has such a fantastic smile!  Okay now let’s move to the metal for this next one.  These are actual metal panels that we shoot in the studio and several seniors select this look each year – not a ton but definitely a few every year and we love it.  I’m going to take just a little credit on this one only because I saw this as a black and white with a close crop when Ally and I were going through them…  Yes I do have a bit of an eye sometimes – ha!

Great Gabby

What do you think?  And yes I think Gabby killed it here as her shirt would suggest…  I love this shot.

Heading outside…

Next it was time to head outside and our weather cooperated nicely for these next couple photos.

Great Gabby

As you can see so far Gabby can pull off the serious and thoughtful pose just as well as the happy smiley pose – she is the Great Gabby!  Let’s take a look at our fun behind the scenes vine of our day before we finish with a fun smile:

And the final smile before we go…

Great Gabby

It’s a winner!  Love having Gabby back especially as a spokesmodel representing our studio for the senior class of 2016!  We hope you enjoyed these highlights from her session!

 

What You Need To Know (So Far) About Periscope

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For those of you who don’t follow social media news closely there has been a lot going on in the last couple weeks after what I thought was a relatively quiet period.  Periscope was officially launched for the iPhone and it is going to change the world again in my opinion, much like Facebook, twitter and some of the others have.  As usual things are moving fast and it’s exciting, so here is what you need to know (so far) about Periscope.

Periscope

WHAT IS PERISCOPE?

Periscope is an app that allows you to broadcast live right from your iPhone (Android is coming soon) whenever you like.  Your followers will get a notification that you are “live” on whatever topic you say and they can tune in on the spot.  They can tap on their screen to show their approval with hearts, and make comments which you and the other viewers can see so you can answer questions and respond to the comments.

You may be familiar with Meerkat which launched before Periscope.  Personally I haven’t used Meerkat, but I have read that Periscope’s quality is better and I just don’t think Meerkat will be the winner in this battle, and it IS a battle.  The fact that twitter owns Periscope ensures its success and the integration with twitter makes it easier to set up and use if you are already tweeting.

The possibilities for where this platform will lead us are endless.  I wrote an article recently for MCP Actions where I discussed 5 ways you can use Periscope to help your photography studio – all of the ideas apply to just about any small business in some way.

Meanwhile with the exception of #2 in that article at MCP Actions most of those ideas are for ways to use Periscope as a broadcaster, but even since I wrote that piece I’m seeing new parts of the world and finding inspiration from all over the place as a viewer.

Viewing Adventures On Periscope

I love that throughout my day I can tune in to things that are happening live if I want.  Some of my faves:

  • I participated in a couple more discussions about social media marketing and photography at @RoshSillars who I mentioned in the MCP Actions article.
  • I met a hilarious pug named Rascal who lives in Vancouver and waits obediently for his food before he’s given the green light to dive in with his face deep in the bowl at @MrTommyCampbell.
  • I watched a demo of the Fj Westcott Ice Light (which we affectionately call the “Light Saber” light here at the studio) at a convention at @WestcottCo.
  • I went along on a virtual live tour of a vineyard in Washington State by the Cooper Wine Company at @CooperWine which was pretty neat.

This is all the type of content that was always readily available on the Internet.  That’s not new.  But the fact that it’s spontaneous and happening live on my iPhone where I can chime in and participate?  That IS new, and whether it’s for educational purposes or just fun, I enjoy it.  Now let’s get back to a little more on broadcasting for a minute…

Reusing and repurposing your broadcasts

The ability to reuse and repurpose the broadcasts may ultimately make this my iPhone video cam of choice for our studio and brings another layer to the potential of Periscope.  This will be more effective when landscape mode is available which is coming soon.  Right now the only way to broadcast effectively is portrait mode (vertically) which doesn’t look great in your typical widescreen formats.  But in the meantime it’s nice that you can easily download your broadcast as a video to your device with the touch of a button in the app.  We recently broadcasted parts of a high school senior spokesmodel session and we had viewers from Italy, Great Britain, and Paris.  I downloaded the broadcast to use parts of it for a Vine since it’s easy to grab portrait footage in the square frame of Vine and crop it effectively.  What was interesting was that the footage was raw – with no hearts or comments.  So keep in mind you can make your broadcast available for replay for 24 hours with all the elements of the original broadcast (comments, hearts etc.) intact, but when you download it to your iPhone those elements are stripped away.  This is different than Snapchat which keeps any added text or other animation in the video if you download it to your device.  Here is the Vine I mentioned – the indoor part on the red background was pulled from our broadcast…

As I’ve mentioned, Periscope is coming to Android soon and landscape interface for broadcasts are also coming.  Here is an article that outlines the changes they’ve made already with version 1.0.2 and previews what is to come.

I hope this helps!  Feedback is welcome and remember to download the app (it’s FREE) and follow us at @frameablefaces on Periscope!

It’s The Frameable Faces 2015 Campus Tour!

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Every now and then you need to go back to school right?  Well that’s just what we did with the Frameable Faces 2015 Campus Tour!  This year’s tour included stops in Ann Arbor and East Lansing and we had a blast hanging out with some of our favorite former seniors!  High School senior pictures are so fun for us and we get pretty close to many of our seniors so it’s really special for us to be able to visit them up at college!

First Stop – Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan Wolverines!!!

We made Ann Arbor our first stop where we met at Pizza House just like the 2013 tour, where we hung out, ate some yummy pizza and garlic bread.  Nicole Davidson (Frameable Faces class of 2011), Jarred Bratley and Cheyenne Stone (FF class of 2012), and Mara Cranis and Alanah Bratley (FF class of 2014) all met us and we caught up for a while.

2015 Campus Tour

2015 Campus Tour

Afterwards it was time to get over to Insomnia Cookies for a little dessert – YUM!

2015 Campus Tour

All in all a great day!  GO BLUE!

Next Stop – East Lansing and the Michigan State Spartans!!!

Our next stop was a dicey proposition because we planned it for a Sunday evening on the weekend of the Elite 8 and if the Spartans won on Friday they would be playing on Sunday – we just didn’t know when.  As it turned out they won and were scheduled to play on Sunday at 2, so when we rolled into town for dinner at El Azteco, the campus was buzzing since the Spartans had just punched their ticket to the Final Four.  Chelsea Cage (FF class of 2011) and Bri Dines (FF class of 2013) met us for a topopo salad feast – just like we did on the 2013 tour.

2015 Campus Tour

2015 Campus Tour

This time around we decided to change it up a bit for dessert though and go to the MSU Dairy Store for ice cream.  They have flavors in honor of the different Big Ten schools, so I got a scoop of Maize-N-Berry on top of a scoop of Buckeye Blitz.  Ha!  Delish!

2015 Campus Tour

2015 Campus Tour

Always remember if you’re the one taking the group selfie to cut off half of your face like our daughter Lacey did above – it’s a thing…  No really – it is.

One last point to make here – we are so proud of Nicole and Chelsea – the two seniors in the group.  Nicole is graduating from U of M and is continuing on to med school, and Chelsea is graduating from MSU and has been hired by General Motors!  So there it is – the 2015 Frameable Faces Campus Tour – one of our favorite things to do!

Keyaira Was Killin’ It On Her Photo Shoot!

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Keyaira was killin’ it indeed on her high school senior session and we are excited to show these photos!  We have some wonderful Spring seniors coming in from the soon-to-be-graduating class of 2015 and Keyaira and her mom Nichole were absolutely delightful, and before we get to her pictures I have to share this little side story because it’s just so typical of how we roll here and what makes it fun to meet and get to know our clients…

We met with Keyaira and Nichole on March 14th for their consultation which we do with all of our seniors – it’s really important for us to get to know our seniors ahead of time and plan their session with them so we can capture who they really are.  It’s not uncommon for the conversation to turn to food either especially if we discover any sort of ethnic background in their history.  Everybody is from somewhere but when it comes to food we’ve had Peruvian and Indian clients help us discover some amazing cuisine for example (there is another blog post coming about all of this by the way), and in Keyaira’s case there is some Mexican background among others in the family.  We thought we had our fave Mexican joint nailed down already in Taqueria San Jose in Waterford, but they told us about Jalapeńos in Pontiac and we ended up eating there twice by the time we saw them again only 10 days later at Keyaira’s session on the 24th!  YUM!!!

Okay, now that we’ve covered taste, let’s get to sight!  Keyaira’s session!

Keyaira

As I mentioned in the last couple posts we had a couple seniors coming up that would be all indoors and all outdoors.  Keyaira had a beautiful sunny day for her outdoor session and she looked fantastic!

Keyaira

Okay, we love the above photo – Keyaira looks relaxed, the backlight and breeze on her hair is great and she her smile is beautiful!

Here is the fun behind the scenes vine of our day:

Next it was time to get some city shots…

Keyaira

Love that color on her!  Let’s look at one more…

Keyaira

You would have to agree that Keyaira was killin’ it right?  She sure was.  We hope you enjoyed these highlights of her session!