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

Here at last is Hazel, roommate and secret confidante of Hobbes. She tried to hide in boxes and on top of tucked away suitcases and underneath the long coats hanging on the coat rack, but those kinds of “oh I’m just a shy kitty don’t get too close to me” shenanigans don’t work with me, no way. I will find you all and I will pet you and then I will take your picture. And maybe try to kiss you.

Bunny, in the tub, where he’s drawn a bubble bath for two…

VanBuren, in the boudoir, where a neck massage awaits…

Happy Valentine’s Day!

OH and Happy Chinese New Year too!

Here were my first paying clients of 2009, three cats named Tilly, Moxie and Truman. Technically, their session was at the end of Dec 2008, but I received my first glittering paycheck from the owner in Jan 2009, so I’m going with that.  I remember when I received that first check, made out to Fat Orange Cat Studio (eeee!), there was this huge jolt to the head that singed my eyebrows and rattled my teeth and sent my heart racing a million miles an hour. I was no longer just dabbling in photography for fun, for myself. I was skerred! Terrifed! My first reaction was to tear up that check and give her the prints for nothing, because I was sure that’s how much the prints were really worth, and apologize for pulling the wool over her eyes. A very sound practice to have, if your goal is to take your business and nosedive it straight into the ground.

{ Tilly, Moxie and Truman with my rudimentary logo }

And here is a sneak peek at the latest critter of 2010.

{ Sonny the pomapoo puppy }

The only unsound business practice I wanted to do this time was to run off into the woods with him stuffed in my mouth.

So yes, Fat Orange Cat Studio has turned one year old this month! I wish I had a hard date but I’m not sure what it is, having launched several times. I “soft launched” on Feb 5th 2009 but switched hosting providers almost immediately because the blog was running incredibly, incredibly slowly. I soft launched again a few days later but didn’t announce it to the world until I was sure things were running smoothly. I wrote a couple of posts and then officially announced on Feb 13 that the site was LIVE! Fat Orange Cat Studio was OPEN for BUSINESS!  (Okay duh maybe 2/13 should be my anniversary date.)  I announced this on another blog of mine I had been keeping, no I will not tell you where it is, and encouraged readers there to visit here and leave a question for me to answer so that I could have content for my very sparse About page. I received a ton of comments, my best college buddy in NYC sent over a bottle of champagne, Dan and I drank it and went out for a celebratory dinner, it was all very festive!

(Out of all the questions I received, I have only answered 10, eeps! I do plan on getting around to all of them though – many of which you can see in the comments here and here – and hopefully the last full year have given me more material to base my answers on…)

I’m not going to give the year’s round-down since I pretty much did that in my 2009 wrap-up post. Nor do I have a contest at the ready to celebrate. So instead I will be lame and just thank everyone again, so very very much, for helping make my first year such a wonderful and fulfilling experience! I feel so lucky to be doing this.

Sarah Parrott is not the only one who’s counting down the days to her wedding to Rich this September. I am too! I cannot wait to photograph this DIY, homegrown, on-a-farm wedding. Their lovely letterpressed Save the Date card, which Sarah designed and produced herself, just landed in my mailbox this week. If so much love and attention to detail was poured into this little 5×7 piece of paper, I can only imagine what would happen when given a whole farm to dress head to toe! (Oh there IS another indicator: Sarah’s growing vintage plate collection to be used as the china at he wedding!)

This past November we had our engagement session and Sarah brought along her magnesium plate that would be used for her letterpressed Save the Date card.

Since then she’s been busy putting the plate into action, and you can see it as the rectangular piece raised slightly between the red sparrows. It’s actually a magnet!

Calligraphy by Grace Edmands Calligraphy. I want to be a calligrapher too. So badly.

The wedding will take place at Pineland Farms, an equestrian center and working farm in Maine, and so of course everything horse-y, farm-y and Maine-y is reflected in the cards, right down to the vintage postage stamps.

Yes Sarah has introduced me to the strange and wonderful world of vintage stamp collecting. Now, I’ve heard of collecting postmarked stamps of course. I did a little of that myself as a kid. But this notion that people have held onto sheets and sheets of stamps for ten, twenty, thirty years – unused! – that then sell for 2 to 3x’s their face value is something else altogether! I am fascinated. And here is Sarah painstakingly collecting and using only the right ones, some of them from the 80’s I think, for her Save the Dates. I can only imagine what the invitations are going to look like…

Read more about Sarah’s Save the Date cards here on her wedding blog.

Today’s post is brought to you by the color orange. And when a post is brought to you by the color orange, that can mean only one thing…

THERE’S A FAT ORANGE CAT IN THE HOOooooOOOOooUSE!

The fabulous orange goodness in question is a 3 year-old rescue named Hobbes. His owner is Jennifer Cox, a contractual lawyer by day and wedding planner extraordinaire by night. And weekends. What a lovely combination of skills! I have had the pleasure of working with her at a wedding that she helped me book, and Jennifer has had the pleasure of revising my wedding contract. Fair trade, right? No? Okay well then here are some photos of your feisty little Hobbes, who is meaty, chewy, but mostly annoyed that I didn’t let him play with his tissue paper in peace.

Hobbes has a pretty tortoise-shelled sister named Hazel, and she made it be known that she hated my guts. But we shall see her shortly because my goodness do I love cats, disdainful looks and gut-hating and all. I haven’t photographed nearly enough felines, so if you have a cat, you need to call me. You need to call me.

xoxo Hobbes!