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

Things to do while in New Orleans:

1. Eat beignets at Café du Monde
2. Have dinner at Cochon
3. Order chargrilled oysters at Felix’s
4. Sit at the Hotel Monteleone‘s Carousel Bar and enjoy a Vieux Carré
5. Buy perfume at Hové
6. Sit in the courtyard of Pat O’Brien’s with a hurricane
7. Meander around St. Louis Cemetery #1
8. Take the free ferry across the Mississippi River to Algiers
9. Take a streetcar to the Garden District
10. Find a sweet olive tree and inhale deeply
11. Drive an hour west to Oak Alley Plantation – the live oaks are massive with beautiful octopus arms! Be sure to grab yourself a mint julep to enjoy while walking the grounds.
12. Crash a wedding parade in the French Quarter (we crashed 3!)

We spent some of the holidays in New Orleans with my mom. It’s one of my favorite places on earth. The colors, the smell, the fauna, the food. All a little strange and very very secksy. I only spent grades 3 to 5 in Baton Rouge but every time I go back it feels a little like home. I thought of having my wedding at Oak Alley Plantation, but maybe I can photograph one there instead…?! Or any of the ones held around the French Quarter so I can a legitimately be a part of the awesome brass-band wedding parade without their photographers shooting me dirty looks? Would work out nicely since their high season is the Northeast’s low season…I dream and I scheme! Anyway I hope to be back again soon, if not for wedding then for all the crawfish I can eat! With the camellias in bloom! Spanish moss swaying in the warm spring wind! Jazz!

All taken on film except for the night shots.
Film developed & scanned by the fine southern folks at Indie Film Lab!

I am so behind on blog posts that I thought doing sneak peeks would be better than nothing at all! These photos were all captured on film using the Mamiya 645 that I rented for the week. It was my first time using medium format. I watched tutorials on how to load the film on YouTube about a hundred times, bungled my way around the really dim LCD screen, and powered through 9 rolls. Film advanced, film rewound, and despite the fact that I probably maybe should not have tried something for the first time at a “live” event, the film scans came back pretty great (thanks RPL)! So great that I am going to get this camera now. Hooray!

Stay tuned for more from this beautiful Vineyard wedding!

Styled wedding shoot for the Jen Huang Photography Workshop, by Jen Huang.

Real-life Couples: Melissa + Jeff, Naysa + Whitney | Venue: Central Park Zoo, NYC
Dresses via Gabriella Bridal: Reem Acra on Naysa, Claire Pettibone (lacy back) on Melissa
Styling: Jackie Weppner, Merci New York | Makeup: Kerry Crawford | Hair: Linsey Synder, FaceTimeBeauty.com
Jewelry: Rent the Runway | Wedding Cake: Sugar Flower Shop | Cake Toppers: Figs and Ginger
Flowers: Saipua | Calligraphy: Paperfinger

Shot on Nikon F100 35mm camera | Fuji Pro 400H & Fuji Pro 800Z film
50mm & 85mm lenses | photos developed & scanned by Richard Photo Lab

*******

I purchased a used Nikon F100 just before Jen’s workshop and used my existing prime lenses. The controls on the SLR are similar to my dSLR’s so no problem navigating the manual modes there. I only needed someone to help me load the film, ha ha blush. The last time I shot film was in the 90′s using my Canon Rebel SLR and kit lens, and I loaded it with the cheapest film I could find at the drug store, set my camera to automatic mode and to be artsy, I photographed things like tree roots and my friends looking out over there, then had the film developed at the same drug store and probably used a coupon to get doubles for free. Fast forward a million years to Jen Huang’s May 2011 workshop and her meticulously, beautifully styled wedding shoot at the Central Park Zoo. Things were definitely done a little differently. I mean my goodness, look at what all these talented vendors whipped up just for our cameras to eat! I was especially excited to come face to face with creations by Saipua, my favorite florist EVER, and of course Bryn of Paperfinger who did some lettering for my logo. Jen had clients and real-life couples to model for us and they looked amazing and were perfect to work with – patient, confident, so nice and game for anything you suggested. There was no reason for me to be shy but I was. I directed them each a few times but I do wish I had done more…while I had the chance…everything so beautiful…

Some small technical notes: I shot manually and between f/1.4-2.0. I metered everything in-camera and for both 400 and 800 film speeds I metered for the skin and overexposed by a stop. I meant to meter for the shadows but forgot. Baby steps. I should probably learn to use an external light meter. Baby steps. I shot 2 rolls of 400H and for one roll I rated it at 400 iso. For the other I rated it at 200 iso, still metering for the skin and overexposing by a stop on both. So far I can’t tell which image belongs to which roll but I will keep experimenting. These photos could probably have been overexposed some more…if I were the “light and airy” type of photographer. Am I? Maybe I am the “dark and moody” type. I think I’m somewhere in the middle…

What I do know for sure is that I want that Claire Pettibone wedding dress badly, I like things simple and romantic, and I’m officially Hooked on Film! When I received the scans back from RPL I nearly threw up from shock. So this is what all the fuss is about! This is what a non-drugstore photo lab can do! (Many apologies for the comparison.)

Oh and none of the images above were re-touched in Lightroom or Photoshop, EXCEPT for the one of the couple embracing, slightly obscured by the hanging yellow flowers. There was a guy in the background and I cloned him out. And the one of Naysa sitting on the ground in a billowy pillow of white. I cropped that some. But no color corrections on anything. The skin tones are beautiful of course, but I also really love how film renders greens. It’s an aspect of digital that I battle with constantly.

All of this was kind of a crazy (perfect) way to get reintroduced to the world of film, don’t you think? Now I have more boxes of Fuji Pros and Kodak Portras 160, 400 and 800 coming my way. I’m so excited to see what I can do with them. Thank you to Amanda of Ruffled blog for your talk on getting photos published. That’s going to be one of my goals this season! Thank you to Brian of Richard Photo Lab who flew in and gave eye-opening insights into the business of photography in general, film or otherwise. I really enjoyed that and I’m very sorry the first thing out of my mouth to you was to suggest opening an East Coast branch. I am sure you’re sick of that question and you’re right, you ARE local. And the best.

And of course a huge Thank you to the amazing Jen for sharing all her trade secrets, for introducing us to so many talented and smart industry pros, and for coordinating such a wonderful workshop that was a feast for the eyes and the brain. It’s recalibrated the way I think about photography, especially wedding photography, and so now it’s time to take my biz to the next level!

See photos from the shoot by Jen here, here and here on Ruffled.

Over Mother’s Day weekend the MSPCA of Boston held their annual Flower and Plant sale with all proceeds going to the animal care and adoption center. Apryl, owner of Petalena Flowers and fellow pet-lover, donated many beautiful arrangements to the cause and asked if I would stop by and take some photos. Those who have worked with me at my first corporate job know I announced with almost a little too much grandeur that I was leaving the company to become…a florist. This without having worked at any flower shop previously or anything flower related for that matter. All I knew was that flowers made me happy and I was in desperate need of a dose of happy in my day job! I still get asked how that turned out. So it hasn’t happened, but photographing flowers by my favorite florist, especially next to cutie pie puppies, is about the next best thing!

My mom has been in town the last couple of weeks so she came along to the flower sale and had her model a little too. Before we left we bought a bouquet for her and another arrangement for Dan’s mom who we were meeting for dinner at her place later that afternoon. MIL received the bouquet with all the thistle (her best friend’s last name was Thistle) while my mom got the one with the ranunculus, Queen Anne’s Lace and lovely drooping tulips. Bonus is I get to keep the pretty glass jar it came in.

{ Did I say something funny?}

Flowers, pets and moms. All the things I love. It all worked out brilliantly!

Yesterday Sarah came up to Boston with an armful of flowers and a boat load of beautiful props so that we could photograph her new collection of “ready-to-wear” letterpress printed lovelies. With no help from Bingley, determined as he was to eat all the flowers or push every prop off the table ledge, it took us over three hours to style and photograph it all. But everything was so preeeetty! The calligraphy (hand-lettering in the bottom two photos by Grace Edmands Calligraphy), the stamps, the jars and glasses, the invitations. These are some behind the scenes with a couple of sneak peeks of her new collection, all of which will be revealed soon on her brand new site!