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

I have a corollary to my last “Things I Like” post back in March, regarding calligraphy. I have been keeping up with it, putting in at least one hour of writing every day – calligraphy is such an easy procrastinating device! – that I have gotten much, much better since my first post. I have miles to go before my hand looks strong and sure, and it will be some time more before I feel like I have my own style, but nevertheless I’m feeling confident enough now to offer my hand-lettering services to couples planning a wedding, without too much fear that anyone will laugh in my face.

In fact I have a few couples for whom I’m slated to do some calligraphy work. Some are couples whose wedding I’m photographing, and some are not! There will be menus to write on chalkboard, dessert cards for dessert tables, and even hand-drawn cat and dog portraitures (more on that later). Really, any little bit of writing makes me SO HAPPY.

I always knew I would love calligraphy, if I would just sit down and do it! Why I never did until now, I’ll never know. Well, I’m off and skipping and hopping down this path now, and I hope to talk about my calligraphy progress some more on this blog, as well as my inspiration, so I hope you don’t mind if the topics diverge occasionally from that of pet photography!

Here are some samples of fictitious addresses that I had a grand time concocting. (Except for Edward Gorey. He’s real and his illustrations are another source of inspiration.) My stock pile of Crane’s stationery is finally being put to good use. And yes, Jane Austen et al. are totally #1 on the list of Things I Like. I kind of localized all the characters. It is not hard to picture Emma Woodhouse as a Connecticut-suburb kind of gal, or that Rochester might be found brooding away in the bayous of Louisiana…

So if you or anyone you know is looking for calligraphy needs, and you don’t think I stink, let me know! My fingers are itching to write.

I love pens. I love paper. I doodle non-stop. Dan yells at me because I’ll absently doodle on bills if it and a pen are within reach. Even with Google docs or Google calendar or whatever electronic tools that are available out there to keep organized, I still keep a very paper-based system of note-taking, just so I can write.

I’ve always wanted to try calligraphy ever since jr. high but like so many other interests I thought I had, I never got past just dabbling here and there. Same with photography. A steady attention span has never been my forte. I’ve been dabbling with photography forever it seems, and it was only a couple of years ago that I decided to step it up. So I’ve decided I’d like to step up my calligraphy skills as well, and quit saying it’s something I would like to do without doing it. I really don’t have any skills to begin with, aside from a penchant to just scribble.

I’ve had this pen, nib and ink set that I got eons ago in Florence, Italy. I used it the other day for the very first time. I love the way the ink smells, like moist soil in a dark forest, the noise the nib makes as it scratches across the paper’s surface, how the ink sprays if I bear down too hard. And how much the whole process hurts my hand.

This is a work in progress! So far I like writing S’s and lower case f’s the best. I am horrible at lower case a’s and n’s. Lots to practice, but I’m so enjoying the process.

I’ll be the first to admit it: I am horrible at displaying prints. I take and take and take photographs and then I take some more…and at the end of the day I don’t know what to do with so many photos. Album or scrapbook? Desk or wall frames? Which ones, in what order and on which wall? I can’t make up my mind so as a result, many of my photos either pile up in a shoebox or in a hard drive, so sad and all alone. If only I had a little direction to help me organize and display my photos so that they receive the respect they deserve! Because what is the point of taking all these photos when you’re not going to showcase them properly?

Enter The Back Bay Framery, Boston’s premier fine-art framer.

I love supporting local vendors and working with great people, so it is with great excitement and glee that I announce a Fat Orange Cat Studio promotion with The Back Bay Framery, to help you turn your important photos into beautifully framed works of art, ready to be showcased in your home!

When you book a session with me and order prints, bring those print in to The Back Bay Framery and receive 15% off all display products and services! This runs the gamut from desktop picture frames to handcrafted scrapbooks to leather albums – and even custom framing.

There are a lot of beautiful products to choose from, and Kerrie, the owner of The Back Bay Framery, is on hand to help. She has been serving Boston’s custom framing needs since 1998, and because of her wonderful service, hands-on approach, and solidly crafted products, her business has flourished, winning the venerable Best of Boston award several times. I am finally getting a few important pieces custom framed, and Kerrie has been wonderful to work with.

If you visit her store now, you’ll see a rather lavish display of my pet photos at the front of the store…

So giddy to see my photos so beautifully framed! No, these are not your IKEA or Crate + Barrel frames, for sure.

Kerrie runs The Back Bay Framery with the help of her lovely assistants, Sadie Lou and Spike (the Yorkie mix). All three may greet you at the door.

So! If (1) You’re in the Boston area, (2) have a dog or a cat / or want yourselves photographed, (3) contact me to schedule a shoot, (4) order prints, (5) head over to The Back Bay Framery, (6) consult with Kerrie to get them beautifully displayed and (7) receive 15% off your order. Now you have no reason not to have your photographs properly showcased.

The Back Bay Framery
227 Newbury Street in Boston
Between Fairfield and Exeter Street

And tell Kerrie that Fat Orange Cat Studio sent you!

The cats are getting up there in age. I think at 13-ish years, they are officially old, if not elderly. So it’s no surprise that most of the time, the cats are like this:

Occassionally though, something lights the little kitten wick hidden underneath their fair bellies, and when that happens, they’re like this!

Their cat fights can get vicious! There’s muffled cries, tufts of fur flying everywhere, and angry, puffy tails. Well, one angry, puffy tail. Bunny’s nubby tail is such that it cannot puff. It cannot puff.

They fight every now and then and it’s always so funny. I love the way their paws separate into little furry hands and the shape their mouths make when they get the air knocked out of them. Their urge to wrestle though happen unexpectedly or in too-short spurts, and almost always when the camera is in the other room. When I do happen to have my camera within reach, just the act of turning it on takes too long, or if I manage to get that far, me creeping in close distracts them from fighting that they stop as soon as I’m ready to shoot.

I think I have to go all NatGeo on them and wait inside a box in order to catch them in action.

But one pretty good indicator that a rumble is coming is if there’s a cat in the litterbox. The sound of one cat finishing up his business and scratching the box alerts the other to get into position for an ambush at the bathroom door. A mad fight ensues. I happened to be ready this day to document the initial ambush of Veebs. He was doing his thing and scratching madly at the side of the box (stupid cat) and I watched Bunny lower himself into stalk mode. Game ON! Camera’s set, finger’s on the shutter.

But it was still so hard to photograph them! They would swipe, do nothing, swipe, do nothing, run, sit, sit, sit, lunge. During their periods of inactivity I would bring the camera down from my face, and that was precisely when they would suddenly lunge at each other. Crazy unpredictable buggers.

Here they are hopping around with dilated pupils. I really wanted an all out thrown-down but this will do.

^ Note that Veebs has all paws off the ground in the third shot, ha ha!

Puffy tail!!

The quality of these photos isn’t so great. High shutter speed in a dark, litter-filled hallway (I was about to vacuum it up when they started fighting), and a lot of cropping because I stood back to shoot. But you get the idea. They crack me up. I have so, so many photos of them sleeping/lounging/sitting. So the goal for this year is to catch more of them in action, before they become too infirmed to move.

Ever since I was 15 I was determined to end up in New England. It didn’t necessarily stem from the need to be someplace different from where I grew up (the South), but from the want to be someplace really old. By American standards anyway. And you can’t get much older than Boston. My fascination with the area and colonial cemeteries began in high school while learning about the Salem witch trials. Any place with a history that claimed the right to religious beliefs and practices while stone-crushing an elderly witch-man to death was a place worth getting to know!

Colonial burying grounds are still my favorite places. The hand-carved slate gravestones, the skull, cherub or willow tree etchings (different depending on the time period), the typeface of the engravings are all beautiful. And the stories they tell. I love cemeteries the way I love photography. You get this one sliver of a moment in time, and if it’s affecting enough, it’s not difficult for your imagination to decide what happened before and after that moment. So when you come across a shared gravestone documenting a succession of same-named babies that don’t survive past 5 minutes, let alone 5 weeks, the story that it tells of the parents, their feelings before, their feelings after, their living conditions, even the weather, is rich and almost limitless.

And the typos are interesting too! I wondered what 1 7 2 1/2 meant, in that last photo. Is that the engraver’s way of correcting his date error? Or something else entirely?

Thanks to Shang Chen of Shang Chen Photography for meeting up with me here at the Old Burying Ground in Cambridge and letting me use her 24-70mm lens. Finally to meet a fellow NIKONIAN, laaaaaa! All the photos above are taken with that lens, except for the 2nd to last shot which was taken with my 50mm. If I play my cards right I will be getting it for myself sooner than later. I did a lot more post-processing on the photos than I normally would too. It’s landscape photography – which I’m finding I’m really bad at, so sad – so why not.