I recently had the opportunity to do a photo shoot with a good friend of mine CJ. He is a tattoo artist based out of signature tattoo in Ferndale, Michigan. He asked if I would come into the shop and take some portraits of him for his website. He also had one of his clients who needed some touchup work done on a recent Tattoo to come in so I can photograph him in the process.
We started out doing a few standing portraits with him in the center of his station and his wall of Flash sheets behind him. Once we were confident, we got a good standing portrait. We did a couple of him sitting in his chair. I wanted to do One of him sitting down to create a more inviting atmosphere and intimacy to the photograph. The lighting was very plain overhead fluorescent. So I supplemented with my Westcott Fj200 strobe light.
If you notice in the first image in the top left, there’s a missing frame. I did not notice that until after we were done with the shoot. Had I realized that sooner, I would have readjusted slightly to the right to avoid that altogether. But hey, after all, this is a learning curve.
Once we felt comfortable that we had a few good portraits to choose from, we moved on to the set up. As somebody who has numerous tattoos, it was interesting. Seeing everything that goes into setting up a sterile and safe workspace.
Once all of his equipment was Set up, he was ready for his client to come back. They discussed how the tattoo was healing and what parts of the Tattoo CJ would be touching up. I knew I needed to get in close without actually getting close, so I chose to use my canon 24– 105MM L series lens with a Fringer converter connected to my Fuji XT2. This allowed me to get some nice tight shots without getting too close as he was tattooing the client.
All in all it was a really fun session. We accomplished what CJ had asked for amd was very pleased with the outcome. It’s always rewarding when the clients expectations are exceeded. And naturally as payment, I had CJ work his magic and give me a beautiful tattoo.
You can find CJ on instagram @slugclubtattoos