Today was the first time I properly picked up the camera this year and the first time I tried to shoot anything for the MA photojournalism and documentary photography that I started last week. The brief is ‘at work’ and I have two more parts to complete. One is set up but I’m still working out what to do for the third.
I think I struck pretty lucky with Dani – or ‘Denny’ as I’ve been calling him all afternoon, until I saw it written down – the laid-back antipodean tattoo artist, and also Dave, his client. Dave is about halfway through 18 hours worth of tattoo, to mark his 30th birthday. Having been under the needle of couple of times myself – only for wussy little ones – I can think of infinite ways I’d rather celebrate. But still. He was very brave, only wincing a couple of times. Maybe he was trying to be tough for the camera.
Anyhow, the second reason I think I was lucky is that Dani has just moved into a new studio this morning, which was lovely and light and empty. He was the only artist working in there, which meant I could move around a bit more freely than I might otherwise be able to.
Being limited to a 35mm lens was no problem as it’s what I’m trying to stick to as much as possible anyway. The drawback though was that I would have liked to get in closer to his hands but was a bit cautious…tattoo needles being dangerous and all, and me being exceedingly clumsy. If he was doing a safer kind of job I’d have got right in there a lot more.
The only other drawback was really at one point to do with using manual focus. I like to get up high and climb a lot onto chairs and tables. This was a challenge today as the chairs were swivel ones with wheels and manually focusing my camera while trying not to fall off and embarrass myself in front of six boys was all a bit much.
I think using a smaller aperture might have made the focusing easier but having to stick to 400asa meant I spent the whole session up at f2-3.5 in order to get the shutter speeds I needed. All in all though, valuable practice.
The pictures are here.