Lexi had a lively fall senior session indeed – there was lots of fun and laughter because she’s just so funny! She’s gorgeous, smart, nice and all that but she definitely made us laugh a lot. You’ll see how much fun she is in the behind the scenes videos below. Meanwhile she’s a legacy here since we photographed her older sister Helene several years back (before we were writing blog posts for each senior) and we were happy to have her parents Robyn & David back to the studio!
Lexi’s Lively Fall Senior Session!
Like her sister, Lexi waited until we had the pretty Pure Michigan fall colors and since we scheduled a morning session we went out on location to do those first – we’ll pick up the action there:
How amazing is that shot….? She looks awesome surrounded by all the Pure Michigan fall leaves!
We also love this close up with the brick:
At this point we went over to nearby woods behind the West Bloomfield library and here is the replay of the Facebook Live broadcast behind the scenes – it would actually be great to have Lexi back to the studio to co-host some other livestreams – she’s hilarious!
….and here is the result:
Fantastic!
At this point we headed back to the studio for some photos where we went live again this time for some fun on YouTube:
…and one more from that red paper backdrop:
Gorgeous!
And there you have it! A lively fall senior session with Lexi indeed – we hope you enjoyed the highlights of our day with her!
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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Yes we are smitten by Sophia! She’s a sweetheart and we had a fantastic senior session with her this week! There’s a fun backstory here as her mom Rebecca found us on Periscope while watching our Doug & Ally Morning Show, and it’s always fun when we connect with people who tune in from close by so we can meet them easily in person. And one more funny tidbit here – I saw Sophia the day before her session at her place of work and I was so preoccupied that it didn’t even register when she said “hi” – and when she followed it up with “I’m so excited for my senior pictures tomorrow” I said “Sophia!!!!” Haha…
Smitten By Sophia
Meanwhile Sophia was totally prepared for the session and when she walked in with a great wardrobe selection and her makeup done by Mandy Rose we were, well, smitten! So let’s get to a few of the photos shall we?
We started in the studio on the black background with the “black and blowy” setup with the fan:
Stunning right?
As usual we have some fun behind the scenes video from the live broadcasts we did at the time, starting with a Facebook Live broadcast:
Let’s take a peek at one more studio shot on that pink background before we head out…
Heading out to Quarton Lake
We actually got lucky with the weather because the forecast had been threatening scattered thunderstorms for days but it didn’t happen! These next two shots are awesome – starting with this shot at one of our fave spots:
Once again I’ll point out how well Sophia made use of her wardrobe – this flowery top is perfect for summer and this setting!
Now let’s take a look at our outdoor broadcast this time from YouTube Live while we were getting the shot above. Feel free to skip through my and Ally’s silliness in the middle haha…
And we have one more photo to share with the waterfall as a backdrop – the purple coordination here is the topper – just adorable!
You can see why we were “smitten with Sophia” – what a session! We were pretty excited to share these 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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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!
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Random Twitter thoughts:
