Who We Are

Kat loves tea, and croissants, Fall and camping.  On her days off you can catch her curled up with a good book, or roaming with her Sheltie pup.  She’s a sucker for really good mint chocolate chunk ice cream and has never met a puddle that shouldn’t be jumped in.

She’s also the “Kat” behind Kat Forder Photography & Productions and co-owner of Studio Bethesda.  She’s a storyteller and visual artist. Kat began her career as a small town photographer and journalist where she learned the importance of storytelling. Her publishing credits include the Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, and Pembroke Daily Observer.

Kat’s portraiture work of children is warm and inviting; often described in terms of sweet treats and baked goods. Her sensitive documentary work, combined technical mastery, makes her a thoroughly diverse and modern multimedia cinematographer. Today her cinematography and photography is often focused on families and children and the issues that are important to them.

Her recent clients include the Louisiana SPCA in New Orleans; the Grey Gables Manor in Pembroke, Canada; and locally for Children’s National Medical Center and The World Bank. In addition to her own corporate, family and wedding clients, Kat has worked as a “second shooter” for more than five years with photographers both locally and internationally, working on-set with commercial photographers and on- location with wedding photographers. Kat recently opened Studio Bethesda in Bethesda, MD. Studio Bethesda is a full service photography studio, as well as a gallery space for other artists and photographers.

Kat is a member of the Professional Photographers of America (PPA) and the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA). She graduated with a certificate from Boston University’s Center for Digital Imaging Arts, and is now an instructor at CDIA-BU (DC).

Libby loves buttons, iced coffee, and toast with butter. She also has such a love for sushi, that she Googled whether or not you could actually be addicted. Google said no. Libby begs to differ. She is a fan of both Cats and Dogs, having only ever grown up with the former, but then when she met her husband’s dog… what’s not to love?

David Wooddell loves tea and novels set in outer space and he almost always has a stash of gummy worms near by.

David assists at the studio with logistics, research, and behind the scenes stuff.  He’s a capable product and documentary photographer who has been in the photography and editorial business for decades.  He helped introduce color to US News & WorldReport and worked as a picture editor for a couple of magazines, where he hired lots of freelance photographers before deciding to become a photographer himself.  David worked for many years at the National Geographic Society as an photo researcher, editorial researcher, research editor, and sometimes used photography as a research tool.

One day his boss came into his office and asked if there was any reason he couldn’t teach himself how to make infrared photography to document some really old painted murals in south america, so he did.  Another time, his boss walked in on a Wednesday and asked if there was a reason he couldn’t be in Cairo on Saturday.  He did that too.

David is our inventor, problem solver and solution finder.

These days, David is also a researcher editor, writer, and sometimes photographer for his own projects, as well as for several publishing companies. About the only thing he hadn’t really worked on were children’s books – until last year when he began serving as Research Editor for a textbook company series of geography readers for middle-school students.