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

If I had such a beautiful cat with such a snowy coat and such shiny green eyes, I would name him Snowball. His full name would be Snowball Igloo Blizzard the Third as I have had two cats named such before. Luckily this cat dodged this unoriginal if obvious moniker and is known as Eppa. Eppa of the Back Bay.

He’s seriously the whitest cat I’ve ever seen, even with his gray streaks at the top of his head. And he is quite large too, as large and sweet as a baby seal on an ice floe. His face reminds me of Easter with his fluffy baby bunny fur, and his eyes and nose made out of jelly beans.

I love cats.

My modest little wedding season started off with a huge bang with Lindsey and Wilson’s Wedding Weekend Extravaganza. It was 4 days and nights of playing host to a culinary, seafaring, history-book tour of Boston, and they wanted it all captured on film. They just relocated from my home state of Georgia where Wilson recently received his doctorate in physics, UGA style. I met some Georgians among the guests who were visiting Boston for the first time. I wasn’t able to talk physics, but I was able to talk all things North vs South! What a treat it is to see Boston for the first time in this stylish, classy, and fun manner, thanks to the lovely couple and their families.

Friday evening: Rehearsal Dinner
The weekend kicked off with the Rehearsal Dinner hosted by Wilson’s parents at Mooo Restaurant. Everyone started with drinks and hors d’oeuvres on the roofdeck of the adjacent XV Beacon Hotel before descending downstairs to the restaurant’s private wine cellar for dinner. On the bar were the couple’s rehearsal dinner invitations in the form of wine bottles affixed with a custom label. Swoon. Name cards were professionally calligraphed – you know I love that! – and propped up by wine corks. After her speech, Wilson’s mom pulled out party favors for all the guests – collegiate T-shirts with the name “Lindsey” and “Wilson” printed across the front. Turns out, there is a real Lindsey Wilson College located in Kentucky! And the crowd went wild.

{ Custom wine labels created by Ceci New York }

Saturday Noon: Bridal Luncheon
The next afternoon, while the boys were enjoying a tour of Sam Adams brewery, Lindsey’s bridesmaids threw her and her girlfriends a bridal luncheon at Upstairs on the Square in Harvard Square. More laughing and mimosa and bellini toasts clinking over plates of delicious food. It was at this point I wanted to forget the camera, order my own bellini and be one of the girls.

Saturday Evening: Sunset & Cocktail Cruise
After a quick change and a little up-do, it was time to meet more family and friends for cocktail hour aboard a boat. When I arrived the boat’s bar stock was already running half empty. Do these people know how to do it right or DO THEY KNOW HOW TO DO IT RIGHT? We sailed around Boston Harbor and a little into the Charles River during sunset.

Sunday: THE WEDDING!
Ohhhh the wedding. The wedding! Held in Boston’s historic Old North Church in the North End, followed by the reception at the Lenox Hotel in the Back Bay, this wedding was full of old world class and spared no details. I was secondary shooter, Lisa Rigby was the primary. You can see all the gorgeous details from Lindsey and Wilson’s lavish black-tie wedding here on Lisa’s blog.

Here are some of mine at the Church. I was not as quiet as a church mouse as the sexton instructed me to be (”Once you’re up there, don’t move!” Me: “What! And photograph from the same spot?”). Well he should know – the wood floors complained loudly with every tiptoed step I took! It was like I suddenly weighed four tons and had microphones attached under the soles of my feet, just in case you couldn’t hear me, you all the way in the back. Oh I love old curmudgeonly churches!

{ See more wedding photos here }

Monday: Farewell Brunch
Finally, after 3 days of non-stop partying, it was time to refuel with a hearty brunch at Gaslight Brasserie in the South End, before catching your plane, train or automobile, and heading home…

A pretty amazing weekend for these two newlyweds, wouldn’t you say?
Congratulations to Lindsey & Wilson! It was a pleasure getting to know you and all of your friends and family.

Here now is a true fat orange cat. Yogi is a gorgeous Maine Coon, and at 19 lbs he really puts my own fat orange cat to shame. I came home from the shoot and Veebs suddenly resembled to me a small orange pea. I think I will now disclose that Veebs is really not that fat, and so my company name is a sham. It should be renamed to Cheerful Orange Cat Whose Plumbing Got Recently Backed Up Because His Mom Tried to Switch Him to a Raw Diet (but that is another story for another day).

I slung Yogi over my shoulder and it was like carrying a baby lion that had just eaten a baby hippo. I loved it!

Yogi is from the same household as Kendall the boxer. He is a funny little bugger. He was so very camera-ready.  Look at him lounging on his back, doing the occasional stomach crunch. What do you mean this isn’t normal?

I had a great shoot recently with a goofy boxer named Kendall. Her owners are opening up a new pet food shop in the Back Bay, and wanted some photos of their motley crew of one dog and two cats to adorn the store walls. They were hoping to capture the essence of their pets – and of Boston too. Yay! I love shooting in the Back Bay, and especially now when spring is in full bloom. After what feels like endless winters, there is nothing better than Boston in the spring. We have cherry trees and tulips, lilacs and wisteria. We have sailboats on the Charles River. And of course, we have baseball. I had a hard time ending the shoot with so many great elements in place. It was only until people started chattering – the downfall of spring in Boston is that it does still get chilly, especially along the water – that I realized it was probably time to stop.

We started along lovely Beacon Street and headed to the river. It will soon be obvious that Kendall l.o.v.e.s her baseball, to the point of distraction! Since it was instrumental in helping me to get 99.9% of all shots, I think I will dedicate this post to Kendall’s baseball.

This post is dedicated to:

Kendall’s Baseball

Thank you to Kendall and your baseball for a WONDERFUL shoot! Kendall’s feline sibling Yogi will be coming up soon. Yogi is the very definition of a “fat orange cat.”

BEHIND THE SCENES

Mom, Dad, photog, husband/assistant, and baseball. Pretty much all hands on deck here.

Since we know Kendall has eyes only for her baseball, to get her to look at the camera I had my lovely assistant Dan hold the baseball right next to the lens.

If the baseball wasn’t in Kendall’s mouth or in someone’s hands, then it was in the water. We lost count how many times Kendall dropped the ball, and in her panic to retrieve it, her legs would flail about wildly, which only resulted in kicking the ball away. And away it goes rolling, into the water. Over and over and over. Ha ha!

Jen is a wedding photographer and a professional stayer-behind-the-camera-er. Even if you manage a snapshot of her, she’s still behind the camera. But for a few hours one afternoon, she gamely quelled the butterflies in her stomach and stepped in front. Just because she was afraid. Afraid of what, we will never know, because as soon as she stepped in front the camera was like GIRL RUN AWAY WITH ME TO MEXICO.

We started in the Boston Common, weaved our way through Beacon Hill, chasing the light, stopped at the docks on the Esplanade and ended at the Commonwealth Ave Mall just in time for twinkling tree lighting. Afterwards I discovered about 99.9% of all the photos were shot into the sun. The only reason it isn’t 100% is because the clouds rolled in towards the end. I was about to apologize for all the backlighting, but you know what, screw you! I love backlighting okay? Especially these days when the sun has been few and far between. Luckily Jen likes backlighting too, so as long as we’re on the same page, it’s all good.

The first image here was the very first shot I took, as I was taking out the camera out of the bag. I could see the whites of Jen’s eyes. So to ease ourselves into the shoot, I fired a sneaky peeky without looking into the view finder. They don’t always turn out, but it’s fun when they do.

Jen should get in front of the camera more…