Li Ward photographer of pets and weddings. Fat Orange Cat Studio is a fresh and candid boutique photography service in Boston, Massachusetts.

I have potential logos! My graphic designer friend sent half a dozen versions, and I’ve narrowed it down to these:

Very clean. Dan likes the last one with the cat forming the “g,” and I like the first one. I’ll change some minor things like the color but this is great start. Very exciting.

I had the pleasure recently of photographing Maritza’s furry loved ones. A dog and three cats, swoon. One cat was snuggled deep inside a kitchen cabinet and she looked so comfy and cozy (and in the shadows) that I did not want to disturb her. So I harrassed the rest of them.

Once I get more proficient in Photoshop I’ll try to edit out the broomstick thing behind his head. I did try to move them out of the frame before taking the photo, but as you can see I severely disturbed his cat nap as I attempted to reach over so I decided to keep the pre-shoot clattering at a minimum.

Poor Malachi. I was really making him work hard for the money.

It was clear after this shoot some of things I need to work on if I want to become a decent pet photographer. But I’ll share those thoughts later…

I was able to shoot another Springer recently. Her name is Lola and she lives right downstairs. She is much stockier than Sadie and has a docked tail.

It’s really cute.

The day is never complete without a serious close-up of a dog snout. Lola’s more of a bayer than a barker. Whenever she’s excited, she says, Ah-woooOOoooOOOoooOOOoo!

I have something to share! A little project that’s been brewing for awhile now. I wasn’t going to talk about it until it was little more stable, more off the ground, more official. But who knows how long that might take.

And if I talk about it from the get-go, I will:
1) be held accountable to follow through with my own plans which I fully admit I am very bad at doing
2) be able to reflect on this journey later with much amusement. Or sadness, if the venture fails miserably. It could be very interesting. We will see. But only if I write all this down.

So, today, right now, I am officially announcing to the world that I, me. Wants to be…a…

PET PHOTOGRAPHER.

YAY! It feels so right it can’t be wrong!

I spent the last several months just coming up with a name. Hardest thing ever. I didn’t want to use my name. I didn’t want the word “photography” in it. I wanted something a little fun, a little quirky, but not too cutesy.

Most of all, I wanted to name it after this guy…

…who for the last ten years has been my muse and my inspiration. That’s right, I said it. The wind beneath my wings is a cat. His name is VanBuren, and he’s rotund.

So Veebs is officially the mascot of FatOrangeCat Studio! Yay for Veebs, I just knew you didn’t have a set of oversized cat hips for nothing!

Right now my BFF Anne’s graphic designer husband is designing a couple of logos for me. I came up with something rudimentary myself but he’s going to punch it up. They should be ready soon and I can’t wait to see what he’s delivered.

In the meantime, I have a portfolio that needs filling with photos of pets OTHER than Bunny & Veebs, even if they are the most photogenic critters in all of critterdom. I started off by using my friends’ dogs to shoot. My first client was this lovely springer spaniel who lives across the river in Somerville. I spent maybe 30 minutes to an hour shooting, and goodness. It was a lot harder than I anticipated. I didn’t foresee myself getting so self-conscious and nervous. I forgot what I was doing a little bit

Here are a couple of photos from that shoot:

She is an extremely energetic dog but unfortunately I was not able to capture too much of her acrobatics since she had a hurt front leg . It didn’t stop her from trying to run and jump though we tried not to encourage it. When she’s healthy again I’m going to reshoot her at the park. I would love to get a shot of her airborne as she plays fetch, and have some ideas about how I want that shot to look. Looking forward to trying it out!