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

This is Kit Kit. Kit Kit is fluffy and orange and likes to play with string. He’s got a paw the size of a tow trunk because it contains a couple of extra digits. He uses it to keep all you varmints in line. A slap in the face from that paw could knock your head right off.

Not that he would ever do such a thing, for Kit Kit is the sweetest little kitty you’ll ever meet, sweet as apricot jam, due unscientifically to the fact that he’s orange. ORANGE CATS RULE. Anyway, due to that demure disposition, as well as the lovely locks and the luscious tail, I could not stop referring him as a her.

“Oh what a pretty girl – I mean boy!”
“I want to take her – I mean him – home.”
“She I mean he – would make a great sister I mean brother – for the boys.”
“Do you think Veebs would be jealous of her I mean him?”

I was plagued with some sort of weird feline sexism. It was enough to make Kit Kit go batty!

Hewp, my manliness is at stake! P.S. rub my belly.

Kit Kit belongs to my good college friend’s mother. He called waaaay back in Feb or March I think, soon after I first announced the pet photography officially open for business, to have me photograph his mom’s cat for her birthday. It wasn’t until a few weekends ago that we finally got around to it. Not in New Hampshire, where they normally live, but at their house in Cape Cod where Kit Kit was spending her I mean his summer. I tell ya, all these pets with their vacation homes on the Cape or the Vineyard or Nantucket and whatnot…if that’s the only way for me to get a beach house, in my next life I would like to sign up as cat or a dog please.

That last picture there on the right is sah-LIGHTly creepy I must say. Reminds me a little of the Scream, but with more hair.

After we shot indoors, we headed outdoors where Kit Kit’s mom suggested we photograph him sitting next to the pond, next to the hydrangeas, in front of the giant maple tree. I thought Wow, this will be the most cooperative feline I’ve ever met! Turns out, as soon as he was placed on the ground, he was off and running back to the house.

Later, biatches.

Here is where put down my camera, pick up my pipe, and begin psycho-analyzation of a cat: Kit Kit was a stray who had wandered into his parents’ garage several years ago, bedraggled, hungry, and exhausted. Perhaps it was all that unknown time he spent out of doors on his own, lonely and miserable, that has led Kit Kit to hate the out of doors as a pet. Better now to just watch the outdoors from the comfy confines of a nice, warm house, where a reassuring scratch on the head is always but a few inches away…

Purr.

See you again soon, Kit!

Meet Anya.

Anya is an English pointer who spends most of her time living it up in Boston – just a few block away from me too! – but spends those coveted, elusive summers on Cape Cod. This is where we had our photoshoot, in the town of Chatham, MA. Anya greeted me at the door and even though I was let in as if I were expected, I actually thought I had showed up at the wrong place – she was so sleek, tall, and elegant like a greyhound, and decidedly unlike other English pointers I had met before.

And she was quite the model too.

Orange and blue make for a very nice color combo :)

Here we are in one of the guest bedrooms which was all white except for one section of wall. With the late sun just barely coming through the windows, the room was like a giant softbox. I could have shot there all day. All the photos looks so cool and clean and smelling as fresh as apples. It was incidentally, the complete opposite of all those things that day. My greasy forehead might have been complaining, but I wasn’t. It’s nice when summers up here behave like…summer!

Lovely.

Some play time in the yard.

I really wanted those shots above. Anya had to get placed back in that spot a few times, and luckily some noise in the distance held her attention long enough for me to experiment and place myself at the right angle. The sun was still a little too high I think, and the colors are a little crazy. But I still like them, especially that long tendril in the foreground.

More sun flare shots below. The first is technically wrong on all levels, and not exactly consumer-friendly. The shot on the right was more what I was going for. But…I think I might go for these out-of-focus-into-the-sun shots on purpose and more often. Why the heck not. And I feel like I see more deliberately blurry shots in editorial spreads too, especially in anthropologie.com catalogs. Let’s do it.

I like the way her sunlit silhouette seems even shinier and thicker when she’s out of focus. Glow Anya glow!

To close out the shoot, we rolled up our trousers and went clam-digging along the beach. Man, are summers in New England the best or what? I just need to get myself a football, a couple of waterfront houses, and a sailboat/yacht and I’d be all set to Kennedy Compound it UP.

Thank you Anya for a wonderful shoot! I had a great time, and hope you did too. See you back in the city!

Today’s post is brought to you by the color Violet.

With special assitance from the color Red.

And a huge contribution from the adjective Cute.

This is Violet. She is the reigning Miss Pug Puppy Universe, did you know that? We had made several attempts for this shoot back in June before it finally happened, so when I showed up nearly 6 weeks after our original shoot date – that’s 6 weeks of fast puppy growth to be had – I was absolutely floored to meet this teeny, t i n y, squiggly little pug, no bigger than an acorn, rolling around in figure-8′s around my ankles. She was 4 months old by then, and barely 4 lbs! Dan was with me on this shoot. His voice became 3 octaves higher than normal.

After the photo shoot and going on and on in the car about how much we already missed Violet, we decided that when the time comes for Veebs and Bunny to cross over to that Rainbow Bridge – which I hope won’t be for another ten million years – we would be very very very sad, and cry a lot and mourn for years. And then we would usher in the Era of Pugs. Possibly rename the business to Cute Violet Pug Studio. Was that too crass? Well, Violet was just too much. She filled our heads with pink cotton candy. We couldn’t think straight, except that we had to have a Violet of our own!

Thank you so much Sarah and Chris for setting up this shoot! I’m so glad we were able to have it happen after all.

Little Miss Violet, ready to conquer the world!