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

Thank you to Kathi of Bark Place and Washington Gateway for having me participate in the “It’s a Dog’s Life” event at SOWA Open Studios this past Sunday! It was a lot of fun and a pleasure meeting fellow dog-lovers and residents of the South End. I love living here! (Sick of hearing me say that, are you?)

VanBuren, the fat orange cat himself, will draw the an entry from the raffle bowl tomorrow and the winner of a photo session with Fat Orange Cat Studio will be announced on Thursday!

In the meantime, here are some scenes from Sunday. See the full gallery of dogs here.

I have so much to talk about, including some of the products displayed on the counter. I don’t think I’ve ever described them much on this blog. So in addition to the usual framed and matted 8x10s and 5x7s, I displayed 11×14 examples of Mounted Prints – prints adhered to thick fiber board and ready to hang – and cool mini accordions. The Mounted Prints I have been offering for some time now, and am pleased that clients have been going for them. If you’ve ever been to the South End Buttery, all the large prints you see there are Mounted Prints. I’ll be showing more examples of those and some other products in an up-coming post. It’s been on my to-do list for some time!

And as an aside for fellow camera-lovers out there, will someone tell me how I ever manged to shoot for so long without a full frame digital camera?! I’ve been using the Nikon D700 exclusively since I got it just several days ago — for this event, for a dog client shoot and a human being shoot (gah!). The 50mm has not come off the camera and I am flabbergobstunned by the vibrance and sharpness of the images. And I like the way it CLICKS when I press the shutter. Such a satisfying, crisp little click.

See below Before & Afters. I shot in JPEG and Vibrance mode, manual settings and manual WB. The images on the left are SOOC. The photos of the right have had blacks and fill light increased a TEENY TINY bit. The second B&A had a little bit of color correction as well to remove the greenish tinge. Overall, in the right light or no, shots have been afreakinmazing straight out of the camera.

Nuts, right?! Can’t wait to share more!

I’m playing a little bit of hooky to upload some test photos. These are brought to you by my new Nikon D700 that arrived this evening, just as the light was beginning to disappear. Perfect for testing out the ISO performance right out of the gate!

I signed for package, ripped it open, put in a freshly charged battery, attached my 50mm f/1.4 lens, applied the menu settings to my usual liking. Love how the controls are pretty much the same as the D300! No need to flip through manuals. Not that I did that anyway with the D300 when I first got it, heh. With that done, all that was left was to snatch myself a Bunny Rabbikins to be my first subject.

50mm, f/1.4, 1/250 sec, ISO 3200

Oops. Forgot to turn off the AF assist light. It made Bunny all squinty, and you can see it reflecting off his left eye. Dan says he looks like he just crash landed on this planet, and I caught him as he’s crawling out of his smoldering space craft. Ha ha!

50mm, f/1.4, 1/250 sec, ISO 3200

I’ve had the 50mm for 3 years now, the first lens I ever purchased, and on a full-frame camera it’s like I bought whole new lens! For free! I’ve always felt it was a little too long for indoor shots, but on the D700 I was able to get these shots of Bunny comfortably. No having to crush myself against a wall.

After a couple indoor shots with Bunny, I went up on the roof deck to do some dusky city shots. As luck would have it, our neighbor’s cat Bella emerged from her rooftop hatch just as I was ready to shoot. She comes and goes as she pleases, and glimpses of her are few and far between. She usually scurries off when she sees me. If I could chase her and make her be my friend, believe me I would. But I’m too scared I’d like, plummet to my death in the process. Luckily today, she decided to grace me with her fluffy presence for longer than usual, and sat close enough for me to get some really pretty photos of her enjoying the sights and sounds of Boston at dusk. I feel really lucky to have gotten these!

Also taken at f/1.4, 1/250 sec, ISO 3200. Noise? What noise?
PS I kind of wish we could let our boys hang outdoors like this. But they don’t have Bella’s rooftop smarts.

I’m so looking forward to shooting with the D300+17-55mm and D700+50mm at a wedding in October! Hopefully I won’t be telling myself afterwards that I need another lens. The credit card needs a major breather.  I do think I can make these pairings work, so woot woot! I’m a full-framed gal!

This past weekend was the Boston leg of Cowbelly’s Traveling Workshop, run by premier pet photog Cowbelly aka Jamie of Seattle, WA.  I think I signed up for this workshop back in February so August seemed like a LIFETIME away. Tricks of the pet photography trade just couldn’t come soon enough. But I had already “officially” launched the biz and it was either wait and sink, or just jump in and swim. I have learned a ton on my own just these last few months, but didn’t really realize it until after the workshop, which was great because I’m a gigantic gutless baby that needs to be reaffirmed every 30 seconds. The workshop also filled in a lot of gaps and made me aware of areas that need major tightening up or retooling. There are always going to be things to learn and re-learn, but after this workshop I feel that much more well-rounded and informed and confident.

Thatcher enjoying non-stop butt rubs

But I think the best part was meeting fellow aspiring pet photographers in the Boston area. To be honest I had no idea how being in a roomful of potential “competitors” would work, if we would sort of circle our wagons, stare each other down and growl. And of course there was absolutely none of that. I feel like I have PEERS now, not competition. It makes this business all the more enriching — I very much look forward to meeting up regularly to practice and bounce ideas off one another!

So without further ado, here are some shots of a few canines that were nice enough to model for us during the interactive part of the workshop.

On the red carpet

This is Thatcher the English Bulldog and yes she’s out of focus! I was practicing shooting from the ankles for the first time – the no-look grab shot that requires focusing and visualizing the composition without actually looking through the viewfinder. I have never ever seriously considered shooting this way before with my DSLR, because all attempts have yielded crap photos. And frankly, I also thought it was a rather hack way to photograph. If you shot like this while at a client’s, wouldn’t they be all WTF, I want my money back?

But I’m sold on this method now. I have had issues with dogs or cats trotting over to me when I start to crouch low for an eye-level shot, or more irritatingly, everytime I’d bring the camera up to my face they would turn away. Now with the no-look technique they won’t know what I’m up to, heh heh. There have been so many instances when I’m walking around the ‘hood and I’ll see a cute, utterly photographable dog and not take a photo because I don’t want to be intrusive…shooting from the ankle will help me capture the moment without being all up in your face.

And this method does yield some really cool angles and compositions. I just really need more practice! I couldn’t resist posting the above photo anyway because it looks as if Thatcher is the English Bulldog version of Angelina Jolie on the red carpet.

Me ‘n Thatcher are BFFs! For a second anyway. We were all trying to be BFFs with her.

Thatcher cooling down in the lobby of the Liberty Hotel.

Here is Marley, the chocolate poodle benefiting slightly from my new-found no-look technique.

Here is Remi the puggle as the Mayor of Boston.

He does get around in the city because I’ve photographed him before! It was at the Pawsh Boutique grand opening event back in April. Remi was just a puppy then.

Marley and Buddy the black Lab on the Esplanade. Buddy is hunting down an invisible squirrel.

And Marley with our intrepid leader Jamie.

Thank you Jamie for coming all the way to Boston to share what you know with us. I hope to connect with my fellow pet photogs again soon!!

Here is a follow-up from this post where I made Veebs jump a lot. I wanted to practice action shots, shutter speeds, ISO settings some more so out came the roast beef and treats, and up, up and away went Veebs.

17mm, f/2.8, 1/500 sec, ISO 1600

What a good little frogger. My best jumper ever.

Why is Veebs so good at what he does?

1) He keys up right before he takes off!

2) He has great form!

3) He sticks the landing!

(How is it that they always land JUST at the edge?)

4) He’s inexhaustable!

17mm, f/2.8, 1/500 sec, ISO 1600

5) He’s orange!

Bunny has disdain for jumping, but I managed to coax a few out of him. It turns out he makes the oddest little expression before he jumps. Very un-catlike. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t want you to see it.

30mm, f/3.2, 1/640 sec, ISO 1600

30 mm, f/2.8, 1/500 sec, ISO 560

Deliberately backlit, fyi :)

Getting better with the focus, but I think I might have to practice some more…

I was about to follow up some more on my previous post about becoming a wedding photographer, but then VanBuren jumped

so I had to drop everything including possibly real work in order to photograph more of it.

So this is how I normally shoot, ever since I got my first film Canon Rebel SLR, the one endorsed by Andre Agassi, heh. Nothing crazy here. I learned it from the Canon manual.
1. Auto Focus in single servo mode (never manual focus. My eyes are total doo-doo and I don’t trust them)
2. Press shutter halfway to lock focus – focus will remain even if you move focus point away from the subject
3. Recompose keeping shutter halfway down
4. Press shutter all the way to take picture

This is how I’m learning to shoot now, which I think is much faster. And I’m taking advantage of all the nifty bells and whistles the Nikon D300 has to offer.
1. Auto Focus in continuous mode (focus point will change as the subject/camera moves)
2. Use AF-ON button (back button) to activate focus, and turn OFF shutter’s ability to focus.
3. Slow burst mode
4. Activate 3D tracking

That is the honey pot right there: 3D tracking of your subject over 51 focus points. Once you activate which focus point to use, it will track the subject and readjust focus as the subject moves. All by itself! So handy for things like, oh, fast moving animals, or say, a wedding precession. No more of my clunky attempts to lock focus on moving subject (crapshoot), recomposing, firing. I’ve had the D300 for 10 months now and have never once used the 3d tracking. (I was spending all of that time getting comfortable with shooting manually, yep.) A reader, Simon from the UK, made a mention of 3D tracking recently, we backed and forthed on some emails, and I decided to finally give it a try. It. is. awesome.

So basically, instead of using the shutter to focus, I use the AF-ON back button with my thumb instead. While I hold this button down, 3D tracking will kick in, the camera’s brain does some crazy calculations based on the subject’s movement, continously moving the focus points along with the subject. When I’m ready to fire, I press the shutter with my index finger.

If I don’t want to use 3D tracking, I don’t have to, without going into the camera settings to explicitly turn it off. I simply tap the AF-ON button once with my thumb to focus – no holding down – then press the shutter to fire.

So what does this mean for me, potentially? Less fiddling. It means I can frame quickly and almost immediately. It means less chance of missing a shot because I’m taking the extra second to recompose. It means more chance of having subject in focus, even as it’s moving.

It means a lot a lot A LOT of practice, because my muscle memory is long and stubborn and doesn’t want to forget its old way of shooting.

Oh and I’m using auto ISO too! So fun! I set the minimum shutter speed I think I’ll be needing, and the maximum ISO I’m willing to go up to, and the camera will adjust the ISO accordingly so that I always get a correct exposure within those parameters. You end up with wacky ISO numbers that you wouldn’t be able to manually pick yourself, like 720, 900.

So here are some practice shots I did recently with all these new techniques. As you will see, none of them are in focus, haha! Really they’re all-around crap. In my defense, the weather up here in Boston has been total crap so the lighting situation is not exactly ideal for action shots.

All photos taken with Nikon D300 17-55mm f/2.8 lens.

23mm, f/2.8, 1/80 sec, ISO 1600, promise of catnip

32 mm, f/2.8, 1/80 sec, ISO 900, catnip

26mm, f/2.8, 1/100 sec, ISO 1000, catnip

34mm, f/2.8, 1/100 sec, ISO 1800, roast beef

34mm, f/2.8, 1/100 sec, ISO 900, roast beef

23mm, f/2.8, 1/80 sec, ISO 1400, tuna-flavored treats

34mm, f/2.8, 1/100 sec, ISO 1800, catnip, shredded

So a lot of practice and adjustments are needed. I probably could have used a faster shutter speed, and perhaps stepped back more. Once we get better lighting I will take more shots and report back. I will master this 3D tracking, AF-ON button thing, I will! Thanks again to blogless Simon for sharing all your tips!

And thank you to Veebs for your enthusiastic participation. Isn’t he the best? He seriously jumped about a dozen times for me. This is exactly why I name the business after him. He is so paws-on.