This is a post about life, work, kids, balance…

What Would You Do With More Free Time?

Our kids are at camp for a total of 3 1/2 weeks and they have two more weeks there before they come home. When we tell people this they say “Wow!”, “Party Time for you two!”, “It’s like a vacation!”, “Are you going anywhere?”, and “What are you going to do?”

Yes it’s like a vacation in a sense even though we are not taking any trips. When the kids are at camp it means more free time – you don’t have to drive them anywhere or pick them up. You can’t spend time with them because they’re away. We don’t have to worry about planning or making meals for them. So yes we have free time but that hardly means we are kicking back and laying by the pool for a month… Here are some of the things we are doing while our children are away:

We are missing them
We are enjoying the time alone
We are launching a canvas business for other studios with the local folks who have printed our canvas for our clients for the past 4 years and we’ve used some of the time by working hard on this. We are excited about it and there will be more to come on this topic! If you are a professional photographer please give us a try. The quality is top notch as our clients know.
We are meandering and browsing at the library and the bookstore – and we are taking our time when we do
We are going out with friends
We are staying in and reading books, watching movies, sleeping in occasionally
We are meeting with a bunch of seniors and scheduling senior sessions – can’t wait for the class of 2014 – new senior frameables will be gracing this blog soon!
We are strolling around Royal Oak and Birmingham
We are spreading the word about our leap into events with our second photographer Angela Bell
We are working hard
We are loving work
Ally is working on the photography lessons she is offering
We planned a little impromptu 25th high school reunion for Doug’s graduating class
We are taking stock – of lots of things
We are going to Eastern Market and Ann Arbor
We’ve had a drink or two
We are exercising
….and we are missing our kids.

What would you do with some extra free time?

Doug’s Rant – Facebook Comment Photos, Events! and Glipho – July 20, 2013

July 20, 2013

by Doug Cohen

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It’s that time again…. 🙂

Several topics to discuss this time out – please share and give feedback in the comments!

Facebook Makes a Cool Change

I discovered this little tidbit on allfacebook.com and I think it could have some pretty big implications for how brands interact with their followers on facebook. I think the fact that people can join in conversations on a facebook page with photo attachments is very cool. As you can tell in the above photo by my little avatar I’m logged in as Doug Cohen, I’ve clicked on a photo on Leaf & Berry’s page that we took, and I can include a photo with my comment if I want. We embrace the popularity of photography at all levels and this could bring new opportunities for our peeps to participate in fun and creative ways by attaching their photos. Our wheels are turning… stay tuned and let us know how you have seen this used and what ideas you have.

An About Face… To Event Photography!

As you may know in the past if you asked us if we photograph events our answer would be “no” with a few exceptions. Well that has changed… Ally and I are still not personally looking to be event photographers – we have our obligations as parents on the weekends for starters. However, our fantastic second photographer Angela Bell has proven to be fabulous with events! We tested her out on some informal affairs such as out-of-towner dinners and engagement parties and she did really well. Then she stepped up to a couple bar/bat mitzvahs and she really blew us away! More on this to come but suffice it to say Frameable Faces is indeed now in the event business and we are excited!

Glipho – Another Cool Social Network

I signed up for a Glipho account and you can follow me here. What is Glipho you ask? It’s a social blogging site – a cool way to pull content in from multiple platforms (instagram, twitter, blogger, WordPress etc.) into a very simple blog interface. You can blog on Glipho, make friends, follow and like other blogs and interact with people. I’ve chosen to use it as an outlet for myself as me – Doug, as opposed to another branded Frameable Faces page. Yes I will be posting some FF blog posts there and hopefully bringing more attention and readers back to this blog, but I like to dabble in other topics like music, food, and football and I guest blog elsewhere so I like the idea of this being an outlet for my “personal brand” so to speak. Do you “Gliph”? Let me know if you do!

Quick Hits

A photo definitely made huge news this week with Rolling Stone putting a photo of the surviving Boston Marathon bomber on the cover. Let’s just say this sparked a LOT of controversy and debate as you probably know….
Detroit made huge news this week with the bankruptcy announcement – I wrote a love letter to “The D” a while back that warrants a repeat link here….
Scott Bourne has written another buying guide – this time for camera lenses. Anytime he shares this type of info it’s worth bookmarking.

Doug’s Rant – To Vine Is Divine, Web Redditing and Digging – July 11, 2013

July 11, 2013

by Doug Cohen

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Vine and Instagram continue to fascinate me and this is the third rant in a row that I’ve focused on it. In the last couple of weeks I’ve actually become a pretty big fan of Vine and I’ve enjoyed discovering some really creative and funny Vines as well as making a few of our own. Here are a few ways we’ve used Vine so far – a little humor, focusing on our community, and a fun hello to our second photographer Angela:

@reflect_o is a thief https://t.co/OHN6LdcZQ1

— Frameable Faces (@FrameableFaces) July 5, 2013

Our six second tour of the @OrchardMall! 🙂 https://t.co/KFpL4iN41w

— Frameable Faces (@FrameableFaces) July 9, 2013

Angela is here! Second Photographer Extraordinaire #LoveHer https://t.co/7vd4Wots8A

— Frameable Faces (@FrameableFaces) June 26, 2013

As for Instagram I must say I barely see any videos there… and I prefer Instagram without videos (apparently I’m not the only one). Being a fan of Vine and not of videos on Instagram is an outcome I did not anticipate, but that’s where I’m at now.

Can you Reddit? Can you Digg it?

I recently read an article on Smart Savvy Social that discussed 10 ways to promote your blog posts and the major takeaway for me was #8 about bookmarking your blog on various social bookmarking sites. I had toyed with Stumble a while back but I had never really spent any time on Reddit, Digg, or Technorati, so I went ahead and registered this blog on Technorati, created a profile on Reddit and checked out the others. I find Reddit to be the most interesting so far because of the community aspect and the points you accumulate for good “karma” in how positive your interactions are. While I am not seeing a whole lot of discussion about the photography business there, I can at least report that so far Reddit is the one that has generated some traffic back to our blog. Collectively they seem to be pretty good resources for web surfing and finding good content.

Quick Hits

Ally is working on a guest blog about using reflectors for lighting purposes on MCP Actions – be on the lookout for that for you aspiring photographers! It may be a little while before it posts but we’ll announce it on facebook and twitter for sure… I also have a couple of articles being published there soon as well.
Here’s a case of “don’t just take my word for it” as the ever reliable Rosh Sillars blogs about the 17 things photographers should not do. I counted and I’ve specifically discussed 8 of them in blog posts and guest blog posts of my own. Admission – we don’t bother with our tripod very often… we probably should a little more. 😉
By the way I’m a big fan of Snapchat as well which you may have noticed is the app interface on my photo at the top of this rant. This is another visual and social mobile app but one that I’m not sure lends itself to use as a brand profile so I use it to have fun with my family and friends just as me. A social media platform I don’t create Frameable Faces content for.

Relay For Life West Bloomfield 2013 – Team Frameable Faces!

July 2, 2013

by Doug Cohen

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This was the first year we entered the Relay For Life West Bloomfield with our own team and we found it to be a very fun and rewarding experience! For those who don’t know, Relay For Life is a community fundraising event put on through the American Cancer Society to raise money for research to find a cure for cancer. We had donated in the past and Ally had attended several of the past Relays. I have to admit that this was my first Relay, and now that I’ve been I don’t plan on missing another one…

Photo Credit Hala Eliya Photography

Go Team Frameable Faces!

As pretty much everyone has, we have certainly been touched by cancer in our families and with our friends and so we thought it was time we did something about it – using our brand and our resources to try to raise money to make a world with more birthdays and less cancer, and for our first year I am happy to report we raised almost $1500. Just so you know you can actually still donate to the cause for this year’s relay through August 31st if you like at our team page. We had a few partners worth noting who helped us – we did fundraising days at Zoe’s House Of Pancakes and Leaf & Berry, and Hiller’s Markets donated fruit which we made into fruit kebobs and sold at the Team Frameable Faces tent at the Relay.

Disclaimer – the following photos were snapped with a Droid and are of varying quality, but they are included here to tell the story of the day.

We started with a fruit kebob-making party here at the studio Friday night June 7th…

Fruit Kebob Party!

Joel Ben-Moche cuts up some watermelon! Yum!

Then Saturday morning started the Relay with the walk of the survivors…

Walk of cancer survivors

We spent the day manning the Frameable Faces tent with our team!

Fruit Kebobs!!! Get your fruit kebobs here!!!

Frameable Faces Senior Carly Simko shows off her awesome decorations!

JC Sidaway sells origami canoes to raise money to fight cancer!

Several dignitaries came to the event including Senator Debbie Stabenow…

Senator Stabenow addresses the crowd

Okay this was amazing…. on a day when people spent a lot of time remembering those who lost their battles with cancer an amazing rainbow circle around the sun appeared directly above the event….

Incredible

We then decorated luminaria bags in memory of those we’ve lost, and then the entire track was ringed with lit bags at night time while everyone walked a lap in silence. An extremely touching and powerful moment.

Team Frameable Faces luminaria bags

Luminaria bags lit with candles

Parting Comments

The Relay is a 24 hour event and Ally and I spent about 17 hours there. Now that I’ve done it I get how special it is. I don’t have a good reason why I hadn’t been before. There was a nice turnout of people, but frankly there weren’t enough. There is no good reason or excuse for not going to your local Relay For Life. You don’t have to have the means to donate huge chunks of money in order to attend. No one will hound you to give. But you certainly can give, and you can certainly support the cause even if it’s in spirit. Even if you just come hungry and eat at the Relay – every bit helps. You will see a ton of people you know and you will feel a really nice sense of community. As for Team Frameable Faces this year was a good start but we can absolutely do better. We truly hope you will join us next year as we come together again to CELEBRATE, REMEMBER, and FIGHT BACK!