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

Photo of owl by nature photographer Jim Gray + Nikkor 500mm beast lens

Here is Pogie, a spirited little Bichon mix who met me at the Boston Public Garden on a warm November’s afternoon. I’ve been shooting there quite a bit lately. Our reward for the soggy rainy summer has been trees with brilliant leaves in the fall that have stayed on longer than usual. Every week I think, OK. Next week all the leaves are going to fall for sure, so better get the shoot in right now! And before I know it, 5 straight sessions at the Garden have passed, it’s December and there are still leaves in the park!

So this was probably the most action-packed shoot I’ve ever done. When I arrived early to scope out areas, there was a small group of nature photographers crowded underneath the giant ginkgo tree (so pretty that tree), gawking and photographing a huge barred owl sleeping high up in the branches. Very cool to see wildlife other than rats, squirrels and baby strollers in the middle of the city.

Pogie arrived shortly thereafter and underneath this tree and the magnificent gold carpet of leaves it created, we posed some, chased squeaky toys and said hello to other small dogs within reasonable running distance. Pogie became tangled in a mesh of leashes, and we followed the trail to see that they were hooked to a tall (so tall!), striking blonde in the form of CameronDiaz, who was just by herself strolling through the Garden with her two dogs.

We all took our eyes off of Pogie for a little bit while trying to make casual small talk with CD, like whatevs, nice day in Boston isn’t it, there’s an owl up there, yeah I’m on a dog shoot, I see you have dogs, wanna be friends? etc. etc.  When we finally focused our attention back on Pogie, he had given himself a really good facial and the left side of his little white face was absolutely caked in mud. And we had just barely gotten started! Luckily their parents understood that this was about fresh and candid pet photography, and if fresh and candid meant mud-caked yet exuberant, then more power to Pogie!

(It was determined later in the shoot that Pogie was really caked not in mud but in poo. Pogie’s dad learned the hard way after a fragrant kiss on the nose.)

After our shoot was finished, I went back to the ginkgo tree to look at the owl some more and see if I could run into another celebrity. Instead, a red-tailed hawk swooped in and landed in a small tree next to me, with his dinner swinging from his talons. He was barely 6 feet off the ground and sat there resting for quite some time, treating a large crowd to a portrait session, before he took for higher branches to enjoy his meal. But he wasn’t so high that I couldn’t see or hear him tearing through the gristle.

So an owl, a hawk, a movie star, and a Pogie under one tree. Not bad for a afternoon’s shoot!

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.

I met Jameson (yes, named after the bottle) and his lovely owner one beeyootiful fall afternoon at the Boston Public Garden last month for this Sato’s first pet photoshoot. The leaves were only starting to change, not as fall-foliagey as I had expected it to be by then, so I was excited when I screened through the shots and saw so many dominated by warm golds and oranges. It’s funny what the camera will pick up what the brain sometimes doesn’t. I was even happier to see Jameson’s playful personality shine through. I really love photographing at the Public Garden – it’s not a big space, and yet there seems to be an endless amount of beautiful backdrops to photograph against. But I can see how the Garden can be pretty distracting for a first-timer like Jameson, what with all the humans and squirrels and ducks and even the occasional police horse ambling by (ooo no, we did not like the horse, not at all!).  But he worked it, he worked it good. After our shoot Jameson’s mom sent me a mobile photo of him passed out in the backseat of the car. That’s when you know you’ve done it right!