As I mentioned in a the previous post, Jazmine approached me to part of the Zodiac series, however when I saw her arm sleeves asked her to take part in the Tattoo series. Fortunately for me she agreed.

It was only when she stripped off that I realised how extensive and impressive her tatts were.

We started shooting on the seamless that we had used for the later images in the Scorpio. It was a three light setup with two lights on the backdrop and a 65cm softbox camera right.

We also tried some with Jazmine lying on the floor. The lighting for these was the same as before with the exception of the main light now being tilted down.

I then switched backgrounds and lighting configurations to create some more drama in the image. As shown below we moved to a single light with a reflector to help fill in the shadows.

It was a great shoot with Jazmine, and I hope to shoot more in the series. So if you are a Wellington based model with tatts, drop me a message.

When I arrived at Pixie’s place she had her friend Sharon there for support and assistance. Now I have always said that I have absolutely no objections to models have friends with them on shoots, provided that they don’t interfere in the shoot. In fact I have called on them to assist on more than one occasion or even to model.

In this case it was the latter, because when I say Sharon’s tats and the fifties style of outfit she was wearing I just had to include her. It took a little convincing but with Pixie’s help she because part of the project.

Lighting for these was from the single 7 foot umbrella.

Pixie contacted me about taking part in the shoot and as she lived in Whanganui we arranged for me to shoot her on the way back from  the Photographic conference in Stratford.

The original intention had been to shoot Pixie on  the same backdrop as used in the previous shoot so that was packed in the car. But when I arrived at her place that completely changed. She lived in this old villa that was in original condition. The kitchen in particular had an amazing retro feel to it that I knew that I had to shoot her there.

That posed some issues as it was not very large and I was trying to light is using my seven foot umbrella. We managed though. The one issue with using an actual location was that I was getting reflections on the windows from the umbrella.

This was solved using the double tap approach. Basically you take two images in succession. The second one goes off without flash but is such a short duration behind the first that the subject tends not to have moved. You then combine the two images in Photoshop and you use the non-flashed image as the replacement for the windows.

Larissa is a tattoo artist herself and when she learned of the project wanted to be involved. When we initially met she was about to have more work done, so we agreed to defer the shoot to allow for this. I ended up shooting her in the same session as Les so it incorporated the same lighting arrangement.

Larissa was a lot more shier than Les so I had to deal with clothing getting in the way of the tatts. You could clearly see how the work was going to evolve over the next year as it was filled in. Unfortunately she moved to Auckland just after the shoot so that opportunity is not available.