The wait is over!

Here she is! I got to do Halie's photo session yesterday! She's the second place winner from the photo contest. What a cutie, don't you think???

The first time I got to "meet" Halie was at the Novi 50's Festival back in July. She was so cute that I used her image as the opening to the online gallery. She's still really cute and she's so sweet, too! She kept calling me Hally - she couldn't get that there was no "H" in my name! It was just too precious!

We took a whole bunch of images and she was such a trooper. Her mom had about 3 outfits to change into and Miss Halie let me take shot after shot of her in each one. True, we did have to do some bribing with suckers, cookies, donuts, etc., but she did it and was really good, too!

She was all excited because she's getting a Princess Bed from Santa this year. She's a big girl now, after all!

Enjoy this sneak peak - I think it's going to be rather difficult to pick from all of her awesome images. This little girl is a knock out! Oh, and did I mention that she has a big sister and a big brother who are equally as gorgeous! What I'd give to do a sibling shoot with these guys!!! ;)

Happy looking!!!

Long time, no blog!

Hey everyone! How've you all been? I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that you're all ready for the holidays. As you can see, I've been really busy - I've had two of the three photo sessions from the contest. It was really hard to edit those images! There were so many really cute ones of both boys - I guess it's a good problem to have, right?

So, not too much has been happening here with me, other than the fact that I've been SWAMPED! I've been so busy. I haven't gone to bed before 12:30 in about a month. I must say, I've been pretty pleasant for a person who's functioning on less than about 6 hours of sleep per night. Usually I'm a big grouch if I don't get my eight hours.

I'm also launching a new newsletter come the first of the year. It's going to be full of great information, super articles and some recipes, too. Let me know if you'd like to be on the mailing list. You really won't want to miss out on this. And I promise that I won't share any of your information with anyone else. What happens with Ally, stays with Ally. :)

On a side note, I'm offering until the end of the year a special on gift certificates. If you purchase a gift certificate, I'll double the value of it up to $1000! Think of it as a "thank you" for being a loyal reader of the blog, or just being lucky enough to stumble upon it right now! So, if you're stumped about what to get for your mom, mother-in-law, grandma, wife, best friend - WHOEVER- let me know! What an incredible deal! As an example, if you buy a gift certificate for $250, it's actually worth $500!!! Who wouldn't be excited to receive that??? The "Double Your Dollars" promotion is only going on until the end of the month though. So get on it while you can.

I've been holding more and more sessions, so make sure you check back and see who's been in front of my camera!

Happy holidays!

Ewan - another winner from the contest

Oh my goodness! Little Ewan was all smiles when I walked into his house for our session! He's just learning to walk and was standing up next to the couch with just a white onesie on. He's a little bruiser! So deliciously cute! He reached out for me to pick him up and snuggled right into me when I got there! It was like he'd met me before! A very social and sweet little boy.

We set up for our session and he was all about the camera. In almost every shot, he was looking right at me. It made for a really easy shoot! My favorite part of our time together was watching him pull the Santa hat off every time his mom tried to put it on! He just wanted no part of it! Luckily, we were able to distract him long enough to get a bunch of really cute shots. We also got some of him wearing red Converse high-tops. He looked absolutely adorable with his big red Santa hat on with just a diaper and these red shoes!

I hope you all enjoy Ewan's images as much as I enjoyed capturing them!

Aidan - One of the "Beautiful" Babes from the contest

So yesterday, I had the awesome pleasure of meeting Aidan. He's one of the winners from the contest. Ok, I thought he was really cute from the image that his mom sent in, but I was amazed at how much cuter he is than that! What a monstrous cutie! And he was so sweet, to boot! Smart as a whip - it's really hard to remember how old he is. He seems so much older!

We had a great shoot. He had me laughing and was just a joy to be around. He gave me a great big hug when we were all done, too. What a super sweet little man!!! As a side note, his mom was one of the nicest people I've worked with, too! So, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, as the saying goes!!

Anyways, here are some sneak peaks at Aidan's photo session. It's going to be really hard to choose which ones to order!

A & D engagement session

These two were just about the sweetest people EVER! They were so kind to me, since I wasn't feeling well, and were so much fun to photograph! I'm really looking forward to their wedding.

A is really a beautiful girl and it's so easy to see why D fell in love with her in the first place. She has an infectious laugh, is so darned funny and is seriously, one of the nicest people! D wasn't too thrilled with having his photo taken, but was a really good sport about it and he looked FABULOUS, as well! Just look at how he looks at her! He's totally in love! Isn't it sweet! What a fun couple!

Enjoy the sneak peak!!

Something for everyone who entered...

Because I know that if I were voting, I'd have a really hard time deciding who should win the contest, I'm going to do something for everyone who didn't "win." I thought that every child entered into the contest was very cute and I'd love to do photo shoots with all of you. So, that being said, I'm offering 1/2 off photo sessions to anyone who entered the contest. The only caveat is that the sessions MUST be held before December 30 of this year. So, if you'd be interested in having me come out and photograph your "Beautiful Baby", please send an email to ally@frameablefaces.com and let me know when you'd like to schedule.

Thank you so much again for participating in the contest everyone! It was such a fun thing to do! I'm thinking that I may like to do one of these every quarter! Let me know what you think of that!

Have a great weekend, everyone!!!

And the winners are...

Thank you to everyone who voted and to all of the entrants! I'm so happy with the turn out and with how well the contest ran!

So, without further ado - the winners of the Baby, You're Beautiful photo contest are:

Third place and winner of a free photo session is AIDAN!!!

Second place and winner of a free photo session and a free 11x14 image from the session is HALIE!!!

And finally, the first place winner and newly crowned Beautiful Baby, is EWAN!!! Ewan wins a free photo session, a 16x20 image from the session and a 10x20 storyboard!

Congratulations everyone! I can't wait to schedule your photo shoots!!

Only about a half hour left....

Oh my gosh everyone! I just checked the polls and we're almost at 4000 votes! 4000!!! Unbelievable! That's so amazing - I'm so excited! Thanks to everyone who voted and told everyone to come to the blog to do so, too! It's looking like it's a close contest again....what else would you expect from a final round with six beautiful, adorable kids? I can't wait to see who's going to win.

I'll post the winners tomorrow afternoon, but you'll be able to see for yourselves at 11:59 tonight! I'll post what the winners won and then when their sessions are complete, I'll post a sneak peak here on the blog so you can see EXACTLY how beautiful they all are! I'm also going to do something special for all the entrants as well as the kids in the final round that weren't in the top three.

It's going to be a fun couple of weeks photographing these kids. I can't wait! Make sure you check back often to see the new cute kids that I've photographed.

On a sidenote, and completely unrelated...I had an engagement photo session earlier in the week with A and D. What an amazing couple! They were SO sweet and they really went above and beyond for me! Aside from the fact that D didn't want to sit on the ground, we got some amazing shots! I'm behind in editing and in posting the sneak peak since I was sick, BUT I promise to have a couple sneak peaks up tomorrow afternoon. Make sure you check back to see them!

Thanks again and I'll be in touch with the winners tomorrow! Good luck one last time!!!

Bring on your final votes!!

Hey Everyone! I'm as of right this second feeling a little bit better. So here's the final round! Make sure that you pass along the blog address to everyone you know since this round you can only vote for one child. I also extended it an extra day since it's so late right now. It's only fair, ya know??!!!

Good luck to everyone! I can't wait to see who the three winners are going to be! As a sidebar, if you book your session shortly after the contest ends, you can probably have your images back before the holidays! What a great holiday gift idea!

The Third and Final Round

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Winners of the second round to be announced tomorrow morning

Hi everyone - I just wanted to let all of you know that I'm really sick and I won't be able to post the winners of the second round at midnight. Hopefully, I'll be able to post in the morning with the winners. I'm sorry about the inconvenience. The voting will still end at 11:59 tonight, but the final round won't start at midnight. I'll probably extend it an extra 12 hours to make up for the difference.

So sorry again, everyone! Thanks for understanding

Quick update and some info

So I've received a couple of emails/postings asking why their child isn't moving up in the poll even though he or she is getting more votes. The short answer to this is - even though your child is, in fact, getting more and more votes, all of the other kids are getting more and more votes, too. The percentages will change with the number of total votes cast. Also, I've caught the site showing incorrect data occasionally. I've hit refresh a couple times, logged back out and then back in, navigated away, etc. and then checked back. Everything was corrected. For some reason, it keeps old data. I have no clue why. What I can tell you is that the top six kids will be moving on to the third round. It looks like it's going to be a close call again. So make sure you tell everyone you know, to tell everyone they know, to tell everyone THEY know to come here and vote for your child.

I'm feeling rather good in regards to the way this contest is going. I may just be persuaded to offer up consolation prizes to the entrants who don't make it to the third round...I'll keep you posted!

As always, email me or call me if you have any questions or concerns. I ALWAYS answer emails and I can call you back if I'm not available if you try to get a hold of me.

Good Luck!!!

Second Round

Opinion Polls & Market Research

I'm so impressed!!

Wow, you guys! As I'm writing this post there have been over 1350 votes this round! That's about 4 times as many as the first two rounds combined and we're not even done yet! What an incredible number! I love reading the comments about who you're all voting for so keep posting! After the contest is over, I'm going to be adding specials and promotions to the blog, so you'll want to check it out regularly. For starters, I'm offering a piece of custom photo jewelry for free if you book a session for the holidays and purchase a minimum of 2 8x10's. That's a pretty good deal. The photo jewelry makes a GREAT holiday gift. Let me know if you want more information on that.

My new website will be going live hopefully sometime this week. I got it all back from my designer Shawn this weekend, and all I have to do is make some minor tweaks to it and it'll be all good to go! I can't wait! There's so much great stuff on it! He did a really great job.

Anywho...keep on voting! The first round ends at 11:59 Monday night. The second round will be up for voting at about midnight, so make sure you check back and vote for your favorites! There will be nine cute kids to cast your vote for. The top 6 will move on to the final round.

Thank you to everyone who voted and for sending the link out to so many people! We had votes from Grand Cayman (one of my favorite places to SCUBA dive!) England and France! So does this mean that I'm internationally known, now???

The Winners of the second phase!!!

A big congratulations are in order for Makyle, John and Andrew! These three cute boys will be moving on to the second round. Beginning on The 30th, you'll be able to vote for who you think should go on to the third round of the contest.

Thanks to all who voted! And congratulations again to the three winners of this wave!

Third and final wave of the First Round

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Keep the votes coming!!

This wave is shaping up to be a very close race! We have several kids that are really close to each other - great job!!! Make sure that you tell everyone you know to come and vote. Photo sessions can be held very soon after the end of the contest and images can be used for holiday cards and gifts! You won't want to miss out on anything!!!

Second Wave - First Round

Opinion Polls & Market Research

The winners of the first wave are.....

Congratulations to our first three winners of the first round! Evan, Ben and Adyson! The second wave is under way, so make sure you vote this time around, too! During the first wave, we had a vote all the way from Sweden! AJ has some pretty far friends! If your child didn't make it to the second round, keep checking back to the blog here. I'm going to be offering some specials to all of the entrants.

Congratulations, again to the winners!!! You'll all be seeing them again in about a week or so for the second round.

The First Wave is coming to an end...

I just wanted to let everyone know that the first wave of the first round will be ending tomorrow night at 11:59. I'll post the second wave on Saturday morning so be on the look out for a bunch of new cute kids! Thank you to everyone that voted! Keep those votes coming! This is really fun!

Don't worry, your child isn't left out of the contest...

I've been getting a ton of emails and phone calls about entrants who aren't included in this contest. "Why isn't my child online?" "I'm looking but I don't see my daughters picture."

Sorry for the confusion! I had a real lot of entrants and I'm not able to put them all up at once, so we're doing the first round in "waves." The voting that's going on right now is the first wave of the first round. The second wave of the first round will begin on Friday and voting will be for four days from then. And so on. Everyone who entered the contest is still in the contest. I promise.

Like I said, there were a lot of entries to the contest and I thought that this was the best way for everyone to get a fair shot. If I'm still not making sense (sometimes, I confuse myself! :)), please send me an email with your phone number. I'll give you a call to try to explain it better. It's a little bit more difficult to do online. ;)

Thanks!!

The contest has begun!

Hey everyone!

The contest is officially in full swing! Tell everyone you know to come and vote! The top three kids will move onto the second round of voting. The next group of kids will be posted on the October 19th, so if your child is entered, don't be worried that they're not online yet - he or she will be! I had so many entrants that I couldn't fit them all into one group!

As always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to shoot me an email. I'm looking forward to all the voting!

Let's Vote!!!

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Wow! Eager fans???

Hey everyone,

So sorry that the voting isn't up yet. I just got back home from being gone all morning. I promise to have the polls open sometime today. It may take me a bit more time. Please be patient...I promise, it'll be worth the wait! :) I'll send all the entrants an email when it's all set up and then you all can feel free to vote away!!

Get ready...Get set...

It's almost time! I got so many entries for the contest! You guys are really going to have a tough time voting on all of these adorable kids!! The voting will begin tomorrow and I'll send a reminder email to everyone who entered. You'll want to come right back here to vote and send everyone you know to the blog - after all, the kids with the most votes will make it to the second round. I think there are about 27 entries right now. The top 10 will make it to the second round and then the top five after that will go on to the third and final round.

I'm really excited to see how everyone votes. Good luck to all the entrants. This is going to be fun!!!

The Wedding!

Ok...this was such a beautiful wedding to witness! The bride was beautiful and it was so much fun watching her get made up and ready by her sister in law, J. It's such a great thing to watch sisters-in-law that have a close relationship interact! Before the bride, S, went downstairs for the ceremony, she had a good friend bless her further. What an amazing site to see that was! The ceremony was filled with rich traditions and more blessings and was one of the more fun and interesting weddings I've seen. It's obvious that these two people are very much in love!

As I've said about the rest of the weekend, I had a terrific time with this family! I'm very honored and touched that I was asked to come back to photograph todays event.

Enjoy the sneak peak! Congratulations, S and S! I hope you have a beautiful life together!

The C family and updates on Baby, You're Beautiful

I had the awesome pleasure of photographing an absolutely beautiful family this weekend - Meet the C family! There were a total of 6 families and I has such a blast with all of them! There were a ton of kids and they were all so well behaved and sweet! I wish I could post all of the images here, but it'd be incredibly difficult to post 70+ images! So you'll just have to deal with these!

Well, after I finished up the family shoot, I got a great surprise! They asked me if I'd be able to come back and shoot S and S's wedding the next day! What a great honor! I'll post some of those pictures in a bit, but I just wanted to say I had a great weekend with the family and I'd love to do it again when everyone's together next time, too! Thanks so much for including me in your day!

The Baby You're Beautiful contest is in full swing! Remember to get your images in by next Sunday. And don't forget to pass along the information about the contest to everyone you know with cute kids! I'm loving all the entries so far. It's going to be a hard decision for you guys!

I'll post some images of the wedding soon. Wait til you see this great couple!

More Questions, More Answers

I've been getting peppered with questions about submitting images for entries. Here's what I need. Send me one image of your child or children that you're wanting to enter into the contest. If you send more than one image, please let me know which one you'd like me to enter into the contest. If you want me to pick, let me know, and I'll pick the one that I like best. Please don't yell at me if I pick one that you don't like - it would really make me much happier to have you choose your favorite for me, instead of the other way around.

The contest entry deadline is on October 14 at midnight. I can't accept any late entries in order to be fair to everyone else. Again, if you have any questions about anything, rules, submissions - ANYTHING, please let me know. I'm really looking forward to seeing all of your images!

Send away!!! Email images to ally@frameablefaces.com

Some contest questions - And so soon after it started!

Well, I'm excited that several people have already submitted images to me for the contest! I love seeing all the sweet faces in my inbox! It makes me smile and immediately puts me in an even better mood! Thanks and keep them coming!

So, I've received a couple questions already. One asking where the space is to vote on this blog thing here. To answer that one, there isn't a place to vote just yet. I'll need to get all the entries and I'll have a place to vote beginning on October 15th, likely sometime in the evening.

The second question was: Can I submit a picture of both of my kids together? No, unfortunately I'm not accepting images with more than one child. However, that is an excellent idea for the next contest! Maybe in January, I'll hold a "precious pairs" contest or maybe a "Super Sweet Siblings" contest. Food for thought.......

It's coming!!!

Yep! It's coming with details to follow very shortly! The "Baby, You're Beautiful" contest is almost ready to launch! So, gather up your most favorite pictures and get ready to submit them. The images must be one that you took or one that I did, or the image will be disqualified. I respect ALL copyrights and I cannot accept another photographers work.

There will be different age group categories so it's fair for all who enter. The top winners in each category will receive some great prizes! I'm really excited to get this show on the road! Look for more information in the coming days!

The M family from the end of summer

Wow! I can't believe that I forgot to post the sneak peak of the M family! I'm so sorry that you've all missed out on such a great looking family for this long! Well, in any event, here they are including Meisha! (She's the dog!) I had such a great time photographing this family! I've been talking about doing it since even before little S was born! Such a long time, right!??! Well, the wait was worth it and we created some beautiful images together. These are just a couople of my favorites. Enjoy!!!

Ch-, ch-, ch-, ch-, changes....

Within the past several months, I've changed a lot of the ways I've been conducting business and there've been some questions as to why. So I thought I'd give you all a bit of my reasoning and methods to my madness.

I've stopped providing "paper" proofs and instead have gone to "proofing" by projection. After my photo shoots, I come back to my office and edit the images shot. Then instead of spending money to print up extra images, I save them and put together a slide show of the images. This enables me to show my clients in much greater detail the images created. It also cuts down on images being illegally copied. Unfortunately, in today's world of technology, it's all too easy to scan and duplicate professional images. Projection viewing covers both battles with one technique. I'm able to project images to a large enough size to see all the little details, and prevent unlawful copying of my work.

That's just one of the aspects that I've changed. I'll be able to give more insight in the coming days and weeks.

Thank you to all my clients, past and present, for entrusting me to capture your precious moments! I appreciate your business and look forward to working with you again soon! And thank you for your understanding with my new policies. It's going to make Frameable Faces a much better operation!

A helpful photo tip

All too often people completley center the subject in their lens. Try focusing on the subject and then moving it off center, a bit to the right or to the left. It'll make for a much more interesting photograph! Try it! I bet you'll love it!!

Sneak a Peak at M's Bat Mitzvah!

I had the wonderful opportunity to share in this day with none other than Miss M. I had the BEST time photographing her, her family and friends. It was more like being a party guest than being the photographer documenting her special day. If all weddings and Bar/Bat Mitzvah's were like this one, I'd do 2-3 per week! That's how much fun I had!!

After doing a beautiful job during the morning service, M. had a great party! Full of super creative things from a very cool "place card" 'table', to great table numbers, but I'd have to say my favorite was the custom painted bedroom door to have her friends sign as a reminder of the day! What an amazing array of ideas! And what a great group of people to deal with! I was whisked onto the dance floor by an uncle and kissed on the cheek by another! Wow!!!

Check out some of these images and then remember to keep checking for my new site which should be completed soon! I'll have some more images on the new site of M's day!

My first blogging experience!

Wow! My first blog entry! Well, it's been a very exciting week for me. I joined a new photography forum and I'm learning some new and different things from it - things that will make me an even better photographer!

For starter's, I'm going to change up some things. I'm going to start offering more products, more print sizes and canvas prints. You know like when you go into the art museum and they have those amazing paintings from Monet or Rembrandt? Well, imagine your kids on that type of medium! How cool! I already have some images in mind of my kids.

I'm also resurrecting the portrait party idea. I think I have it all figured out and it's going to be a lot of fun for everyone. I'm also toying with the idea of a "ladies night out." Details to follow on that one.

If you have any other fun suggestions for me, please let me know. In the meantime, I'm going to keep blogging (it's kind of the only time that I have where no one bothers me! I love it!!). Please check back often and say hi! Also feel free to pass this along to anyone you know. I'll be posting specials I'm running as well as some new surprises.

Have a great day!