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

Today, I need no champagne to feel bubbly. I am so fizzy and filled with giddy goodness that I don’t know what to do with myself. I am so tee hee hee and a hoo hoo hoo!

And as an added bonus to an already great day, I improved my photo retouching workflow by a factor of a million. Celebraaaaation. So now instead of spending two days or so (ugh!) to process a couple hundred photos, I’ve got it down to a couple of hours. I’d like to get it down to one hour at most, which would include the post-processing of selected raw files, optimizing them for the 1. blog (including watermark) 2. the client proofing section and 3. the portfolio site, all of which need to be re-cropped to different aspect ratios, and resized to different dimensions. This is what’s kind of making things clunky for me right now, having to re-crop and resize the same photo 3 different ways.

Today’s featured pet is Ms. Kitty, proud owner of Kathy and her husband.

One thing that I’ve found a little challenging when shooting cats is their natural inclination to do absolutely nothing. Veebs is the master at doing Nothing, especially when you want him doing Something. One of my favorite poses well-known to all cats is the “loaf” or “boat” pose, where they tuck all their limbs underneath their bodies, front legs and paws curled over the chest so they look like they’re sitting on their own flotation devices, tail wrapped closely around the side. Push them out into open water and they’re ready to set sail!

But however much I like it, there is really only so long one can continue taking photos of the loaf pose. All angles can quickly be covered when the cat’s not moving. Thus, the cat must be engaged, whether she likes it or not. Usually they don’t, but the cat must move. The cat. Must. Play.

Or not.

Pretty please? Pretty please with a mouse on top?

Yessss….yessss! You know what to do, Kitty, you know what to do!

Such a very very VERY BAD MOUSE!

So on any other day it might have been nap time, but today for a little while we were able to make it play time…

And the shoot ended with a pretty pose.

I had a ton of fun on this shoot; there were some bust-out laughing moments as we tried to get a sometimes apathetic Kitty to participate. So thank you Kitty!

I’m over-thinking it. Everything. I got my first check a few months ago, and after the excitement of seeing “FOC Studio” on the check passed, I wanted to tear it to shreds because I was sure the customer actually hated my prints and regretted hiring me. I came to this conclusion when her email did not include enough exclamation points. She “loved” the prints, which is not the same as “OMG SQUEEE LOVED!!!!” the prints.

All of these junior high school emotional theatrics is exhausting and highly annoying, especially to Dan who has to talk me down from a ledge over other day. A very small ledge though, maybe only about yea-high, but a ledge nonetheless.

For now I’ll cut myself some slack since this is all brand-new to me, and soon enough I’ll be able to navigate my way through it. I know I will. Although there are many unseen roadblocks coming, nothing was ever a bigger roadblock than not knowing my true passion in life. So really, I’m already a million steps ahead than where I was. It feels SO. GOOD.

Anyway. Here are some photos I took today of Veebs as I was waiting for lunch to heat up. Veebs was hanging out on the butcher block table (hate it when he does this but what can you do, cats always get their way), I bent down to scratch my ankle and when I looked up, the sun was in my eyes. I slowly stood up until Veeb’s head blocked the light, and his ears became pointy little silhouettes, outlined in gold. And then I knew what time it was. It was lens flare time!

I call this “VanBuren Cat, Superstar”

This one is “Sunrise Over Ayers Rock”

If God were a cat, this is what we would see if we tried to look Him in the face (apologies for the sacrilege).

Now my eyes really hurt.

If Anderson Cooper were a cat, he’d look like this:

VanBuren’s New Year resolution was to play more. Get active, move around some, rediscover his inner kitten. I took him up on it and volunteered to help him train. We started light with a toy his grandmother gave him for Christmas – an uncontroversial plastic ball with a little bell inside.

Veebs stood at the bottom of the stairs while I rolled the ball down. The idea was for him to extend his arm and catch it. Work on his reflexes/hand-eye coordination.

The only part of his body that moved were his eyeballs.

We tried another tactic to see if it would be more enticing – me rolling the ball up to him. Again the idea was for him to catch it.

He did not catch it. He did not catch on.

Perhaps it was just too much stimuli, or he was shy, or he wanted to play on his own terms. So I left the ball in front of him and crept upstairs, leaving him to his own devices.

A few seconds later…

Score!