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

Subtitled: My First Official Wedding Booking from Complete Strangers and Engagement Shoot
And sub-subtitled: What I’d Want as a Wedding Photographer

A recent engagement shoot but a post I meant to write months ago…

Let’s see, where do I start? I’ll start from the beginning. Back in September of last year I announced to a small group of friends both in my personal life and in the crafty community that I was going to start a pet photography business. One crafty friend in particular pointed her housemate Sarah to me. Sarah had just gotten a rescue puppy and wanted photographs taken. For whatever reason, I didn’t see her email until several months later, and when I did I could barely contain my excitement. And hoped I hadn’t put her off with my very late response. Because not only does Sarah have a dog, but she also has a custom letterpress and screenprinting paper business. I love paper. I love letterpress. So much. You ask anyone and they can corroborate.

So here I was, in need of some grown-up thank you cards, while she needed photos of her Simone. We were able worked out a swap. And it worked out beautifully. In case you haven’t’ seen it yet, here are my photos of her Lab mix Simone, and here are Sarah’s beautiful letterpress cards that I still have a hard time using. There is something magical about seeing your name and biz in the age-old art of the letterpress, knowing the effort that went into making each card one. by. one.

During Simone’s shoot, I remember in the car ride with Sarah and how we got to talking about paper, photography and all things weddings. She had recently gotten engaged to her boyfriend Rich, and had started a blog to document all the ideas and inspiration for her wedding.

We’re talking a little about our hopes and dreams.  I wonder if I would branch out into other forms of photography such as weddings (NO. Too hard), she’s describing her wedding and all the yummy DIY details and “mini-themes” that she’d like to incorporate. There was no date yet, but this girl knew what she wanted. And as she’s describing more, I started changing my mind about photographing weddings on the spot. I thought, This wedding sounds wonderful! Dahlias and horses! I could be niche wedding photographer for soley “homegrown” weddings like Sarah’s envisioning, and be really happy working with creative brides, I could! But she was thinking of using a friend photographer at that point, so I didn’t press. Not that I knew then if weddings was something I could or want to do anyway.

But I tell you, I went home that day and read her wedding blog from start to finish. I love how very wide-ranging yet specific her vision for their wedding is. The theme is Homegrown. Immediately that word brings very pleasant associations. I didn’t have to read the rest of her blog to immediately picture mason jars, hay bales, wildflowers, cows, sun low on the horizon, and for some reason, checker boards (that’s just me).

Giddy with inspiration after reading her blog, I googled:

intimate wedding
picnic wedding
shack wedding
cemetery wedding
wedding in the woods
classy DIY wedding
homegrown wedding

to see what was out there. I decided if I ever seriously got into wedding photography, that, those, would be my niche.

Fast forward a couple of months. I meet a Boston wedding photog (hi Lisa!) and second shoot with her on several events for experience which was really, really great. After thinking it over, I decide I want to get into weddings, make a blog post about it, but don’t really follow through with details, other than I want to do “specific” kinds of weddings. I wasn’t sure what my approach would be – narrow my focus right out of the gate, or just photograph as much as I could for more experience? Or maybe I should just hold my horses and concentrate on getting my pet photog business firmly rooted first?

But I threw that post up to just get it out there…and thought about Sarah and her wedding the entire time I wrote it.

So I was beyond flattered, excited, happy, SURPRISED when I get an email from her in mid-summer, asking me if I’d like to photograph her wedding. !!!!! was my response, and then a YES PLEASE, followed by a ARE YOU SURE? This was my first official booking and I couldn’t believe I was getting Sarah & Rich! The location is on a working farm in Maine! There will be cows and horses and dahlias in antique milk glasses that she’s collecting! There will be mismatched vintage china from all the antique shops she’s scoured in New England! There will be a lot of exclamation marks!! The only problem is the date – a whole year away. It can’t get here soon enough!

Now we are all caught up. Both Sarah and I are getting our dream weddings, hee hee. I’m so excited. We are a match made in heaven.

She and her fiance Rich aren’t a bad match either. :) This past weekend they came up to Boston from their home in Providence, RI for their engagement shoot. It was my first e-shoot and my extreme nervousness about it prompted me to go Type A and map out a possible shooting route. Since they got engaged in Paris (the boy knows how to do a few things right too), I thought it would be fun to make the shoot Parisian themed. Boston can look very European, you know, so it wasn’t hard.

We started off with cocktails at Bouchee Brasserie on Newbury Street, posed in front of a gothic-style cathedral, window-shopped at a Michel Delacroix gallery exhibit, walked down Commonwealth Ave mall (which was designed in the French boulevard style, did you know), and ended at the Boston Public Garden. They were fun, playful, happy, gorgeous. And cold. Oops!

The last shot is a mirrored photo of Sarah’s letterpress plate that will be used for their save the date cards. Isn’t it wonderful to be so creative? I can’t wait to see the real thing.

So, in short (ha ha too late for that), I was already very happy to have found my official Fat Orange Cat Studio stationer in Sarah’s Parrott Design Studio, so I am pretty much beside myself and honored that they’ve including me in their wedding plans. They are so fun and easy to work with, have so much class and style that I can’t wait to see how all their wedding planning unfolds. Check out Sarah’s vision and her lovely writing on her blog, Homegrown Wedding. And her custom stationery biz blog, Things Are Better With a Parrott.

Now! Back to your Thanksgiving plans. I have stuffed mushrooms and sweet gingery mashed potatoes to make!

I’ve been taking breaks to do some shooting for myself – with my camera phone. My favorite places for inspiration: various public alleys in Boston, the new Jonathan Adler store on Newbury St, and Anthropologie on Boylston St.

It was a gloomy, rainy, photographically unfriendly day when I made my way to Charlestown for a kitty shoot. My umbrella turned inside out a few times on the way. Water eeped into my shoes and splashed across my jeans, and I showed up raw, sniffling and shivering and looking like a wartime photographer who was just assailed by a giant sea sponge. But what of it? I was about to meet an orange cat named Teddy. I knew that that cat, through the sheer force of his orangeness, would heal me. He would make everything right again. And he did.

We may have stirred him from his mid-afternoon nap under the covers. That orange cat is smart. Had it been my own home I might have joined him. But today was a day to strike a few poses in front of the camera, so out came Teddy, with the help of catnip infused mice and sparkly toys. Lots and LOTS of sparkly toys (Teddy’s mom let me take home a few for the boys, and we’ve been finding them in our shoes every morning, hee hee). Teddy posed and played and in general just really brought his A game – as would be expected for an orange cat – before we called it a day. Teddy then returned to the comforts of the bedsheets. Which he shares rather unenthusiastically with pretty black kitty named Gidget. We will have Gidget’s photos in a separate post, because for all intents and purposes I did two separate cat shoots. These two refused to share the spotlight!

Thank you, young orange catted Teddy, for a super fun kitty shoot! I’ve missed doing cat shoots! Must do more!

PS I need to give a special shout-out – again – to my D700 + 50mm f1.4 lens. There is a reason why Teddy’s eyes are huge pools of ink in all these photos. He wasn’t scared nor was he pissed off (I don’t think). He was trying to gather any and all available light in the room, just like my camera. I shot with the lens completely dilated at 1.4 the whole time. I can’t speak for Teddy’s eyeballs, but I thought the camera + lens combo did a fabulous job. Those two were the best investments I’ve ever made.

Finally! I’ve gotten around to posting my favorite images from Katarina and Brian’s wedding at the beginning of October. The ceremony and reception was held at his father’s Italian restaurant (named Catarina’s Italian Village!) in the seaside town of Narragansett, Rhode Island where the groom grew up. When I spoke to them just a month and a half or so before the wedding date, they hadn’t even sent out invitations! Wedding planning was understandably slow-going, owing to the very recent arrival of their baby girl, seen above looking adorable in her little red dress with matching cardigan. But not to worry! Jennifer from Esq. Events swooped in and got the party planning started, and everything fell into place. There were beautiful rose bouquets in fall colors, a 3-tiered cake, a one-woman accordion band, limoncello toasts, a 90-year-old dancing fiend,  parents and a bridesmaid all the way from Sweden, and sparklers which we used to uh, smoke out our bride and groom at the end of the day. Get! Get thee to a honeymoon!! Ah, all their stealing of kisses and holding of hands was enough to make the remaining icebergs melt. It was a real honor to be a part of Brian and Katarina’s wedding day.