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

This is Riley, an 8 year-old yellow Lab.

We are near neighbors. She lives on one of my favorite streets in the South End — Union Park.

We had scheduled our shoot for the first weekend of July, and miraculously, had the shoot during the first weekend of July.  How refreshing to not have to postpone or deal with the rain! After such a miserably dreary June, Riley was happy to be outdoors, soaking in the summer sun. And so. was. I.

Union Park is all old and historic, and the iron fence surrounding the park is nearly a hundred years old and in need of repairs. With a faded sign and a rusty padlock, it feebly attempts to keep dogs out. Feebly. For the sake of art we will break the rules. We will toss Riley over the fence and we will break the rules.

After sitting so prettily and forbiddenly inside Union Park, we headed to another nearby park where a dog can be a dog. Jumping was mandatory.

So was relaxing with one leg out.

For this urban puppy, life is definitely good!

Finally, some more photos to show of Logan, the cutie-pie pointer who is participant of FOCStudio’s Puppy Progress Package – 3 sessions spaced apart to document the baby, teen and adult stages of doggy life.

We had our first baby shoot in early April when he was just 6 weeks old. Our second shoot was in early July.

6 weeks old looks like this:

4 months old suddenly looks rather presidential!

Oo ah. A quick interruption before we get into more Logan photos: I can’t resist adding this shot of Keira solo because it just cracks me up. She is so freaking intense, I could photograph just her all day and be thoroughly entertained. Logan was sort of running around the couch and oooo! That tail of hers was whipping and thumping angrily with disapproval. Me sticking my face in hers didn’t particularly thrill her either. After she killed Logan I was sure she was going to come for me.

Click to see more of Keira from our previous session.

OK, back to Logan.

In April, he was itty bitty in dad’s arms. In July, he barely fit in his lap.

In April, Logan burrowed his baby snout into the couch. In July, he did the same, just with a much more pronounced snout. And see how brown his eyes became!

In April, Logan’s giant toy lobster had the upper claw. In July, the mighty fell…

Logan is so grown up!

Or is he? Soon after our shoot indoors, we went out for a walk around Arnold Arboretum where Logan proceeded to do pretty much NOTHING I asked him to! For some moments there I was wondering if, at long last, this was the day where none of my shots would be in focus. Where his parents would look at these photos and declare me a fraud, tell me that I’m more suited to photographing the Loch Ness monster instead of pets (that would be awesome, actually).  I was pulling uncomfortably at my neck tie. It was an already humid, sticky day – I didn’t need anything else to add to the sweat!

Teenagers!

Luckily, in between all of the goofiness, we managed to bribe a few cooperative moments out of him.

Ears as floppy as the foliage behind him.

When we got home, we tried to recreate the scene on the stairs…

Not quite the same, but it’s got a flavor all its own.

I so enjoy these Puppy Progress photo sessions and and am looking forward to seeing what changes and goofiness the 3rd – and final, 100% grown-up, sniff – session will bring. See you again soon Logan!

I heart you Lisa Rigby for letting me second shoot this wedding! If any of you were in the Boston area for any and/or all part of June, you’ll know how depressingly dismal and dreary and drizzly that entire month was. It was enough to make me scream. This wedding was smack in the middle of all that – but had you been at this wedding you wouldn’t know it. Smiles and crinkly eyes and warm and fuzzies all around, enough to have you convinced that the sun was blazing, the birds were singing, and that you were having a perfect hair day.

The wedding was set in a mansion on a sprawling homestead outside of Boston. While Lisa was downstairs photographing the bride getting ready, I was upstairs photographing the guys getting ready. I mean, “getting ready.” There’s not much that guys have to do to get ready aside from making sure their flies are zipped. But for my benefit, they made quite a show of primping nonetheless:

There was also a very jazzy rehearsal of the Hora. They cracked me up.

Sarah and Oren chose to do a “first look” before the ceremony.

Then we headed outside in the drizzling rain for a photoshoot along the verdant grounds. All that lush greenery and the mosquitoes and the humidity – it was like being in a jungle but without the decency of having the sun present. But again! You didn’t hear a peep about it from the bride and groom. All I know is that my hair would not have fared as well as hers in that weather, and therefore, I might have complained about the weather more.  Ah, to have such lovely, natural curls…

Umbrellas everywhere! I was official umbrella holder, but couldn’t resist ditching them a few seconds to sneak some shots in alongside Lisa. Soon the rain started coming down a little more heavily so I had to scamper back to get them – but not without taking a shot of our props first, of course.

They were such GREAT sports about it all. By the time we were done, the hem of Sarah’s beautiful vintage dress was soaked. But did she care? No!

I just want you to know that I took these shots – first, above and below – while holding two umbrellas, in one hand. That’s right. Camera, an umbrella to cover Lisa to the right of me, another umbrella to cover me, one hand. We are so awesome and gifted.

A sweet moment between mother and daughter before they give her away. I kinda get a little teary when I look at this for a second too long.

A BBQ reception – courtesy of Blue Ribbon Barbeque, my favorite joint EVER -  held outside the mansion, under the prettiest tent I’ve ever seen.

And a fantastic live band thanks to Bo Winiker & Orchestra.

All women deserved to be looked at this way by their guy.

And the same thing applies the other way around.

The intensity of their gaze was enough to make me not want to take these photos as I felt very much the voyeur, but I’m so glad I caught these. If I’m honest with myself I can’t say – or maybe I don’t know – when was the last time I looked at Dan quite the way that Sarah is looking at Oren. Like she could bore a heart-shaped hole straight through his skull with her eyes. So I went home and thought it was high time I gave my guy the googly, starry eyes treatment. Because he deserves it! So that night, while he played video games, I sat next to him on the couch and I gazed directly and lovingly into his profile. I don’t think he knew what was going on except that in his periphery he could tell I was being “creepy” which was distracting him from his game play. Sigh. No we’re not newlyweds anymore.

Thanks Lisa for having me second shoot. It was so fun and another great learning experience. Shooting through rain? I can cross that off the list! Shooting a beautiful, joyous couple? I can cross that off too. I enjoyed every minute of it. Congrats Sarah and Oren. You guys were seriously a lovely, LOVELY couple.

This was Logan back in April.

This is Logan now in July.

Lobster and Logan are now even in claw-to-paw combat, but Logan is continuing to gain the edge. More to come!

I was about to follow up some more on my previous post about becoming a wedding photographer, but then VanBuren jumped

so I had to drop everything including possibly real work in order to photograph more of it.

So this is how I normally shoot, ever since I got my first film Canon Rebel SLR, the one endorsed by Andre Agassi, heh. Nothing crazy here. I learned it from the Canon manual.
1. Auto Focus in single servo mode (never manual focus. My eyes are total doo-doo and I don’t trust them)
2. Press shutter halfway to lock focus – focus will remain even if you move focus point away from the subject
3. Recompose keeping shutter halfway down
4. Press shutter all the way to take picture

This is how I’m learning to shoot now, which I think is much faster. And I’m taking advantage of all the nifty bells and whistles the Nikon D300 has to offer.
1. Auto Focus in continuous mode (focus point will change as the subject/camera moves)
2. Use AF-ON button (back button) to activate focus, and turn OFF shutter’s ability to focus.
3. Slow burst mode
4. Activate 3D tracking

That is the honey pot right there: 3D tracking of your subject over 51 focus points. Once you activate which focus point to use, it will track the subject and readjust focus as the subject moves. All by itself! So handy for things like, oh, fast moving animals, or say, a wedding precession. No more of my clunky attempts to lock focus on moving subject (crapshoot), recomposing, firing. I’ve had the D300 for 10 months now and have never once used the 3d tracking. (I was spending all of that time getting comfortable with shooting manually, yep.) A reader, Simon from the UK, made a mention of 3D tracking recently, we backed and forthed on some emails, and I decided to finally give it a try. It. is. awesome.

So basically, instead of using the shutter to focus, I use the AF-ON back button with my thumb instead. While I hold this button down, 3D tracking will kick in, the camera’s brain does some crazy calculations based on the subject’s movement, continously moving the focus points along with the subject. When I’m ready to fire, I press the shutter with my index finger.

If I don’t want to use 3D tracking, I don’t have to, without going into the camera settings to explicitly turn it off. I simply tap the AF-ON button once with my thumb to focus – no holding down – then press the shutter to fire.

So what does this mean for me, potentially? Less fiddling. It means I can frame quickly and almost immediately. It means less chance of missing a shot because I’m taking the extra second to recompose. It means more chance of having subject in focus, even as it’s moving.

It means a lot a lot A LOT of practice, because my muscle memory is long and stubborn and doesn’t want to forget its old way of shooting.

Oh and I’m using auto ISO too! So fun! I set the minimum shutter speed I think I’ll be needing, and the maximum ISO I’m willing to go up to, and the camera will adjust the ISO accordingly so that I always get a correct exposure within those parameters. You end up with wacky ISO numbers that you wouldn’t be able to manually pick yourself, like 720, 900.

So here are some practice shots I did recently with all these new techniques. As you will see, none of them are in focus, haha! Really they’re all-around crap. In my defense, the weather up here in Boston has been total crap so the lighting situation is not exactly ideal for action shots.

All photos taken with Nikon D300 17-55mm f/2.8 lens.

23mm, f/2.8, 1/80 sec, ISO 1600, promise of catnip

32 mm, f/2.8, 1/80 sec, ISO 900, catnip

26mm, f/2.8, 1/100 sec, ISO 1000, catnip

34mm, f/2.8, 1/100 sec, ISO 1800, roast beef

34mm, f/2.8, 1/100 sec, ISO 900, roast beef

23mm, f/2.8, 1/80 sec, ISO 1400, tuna-flavored treats

34mm, f/2.8, 1/100 sec, ISO 1800, catnip, shredded

So a lot of practice and adjustments are needed. I probably could have used a faster shutter speed, and perhaps stepped back more. Once we get better lighting I will take more shots and report back. I will master this 3D tracking, AF-ON button thing, I will! Thanks again to blogless Simon for sharing all your tips!

And thank you to Veebs for your enthusiastic participation. Isn’t he the best? He seriously jumped about a dozen times for me. This is exactly why I name the business after him. He is so paws-on.