Tats

In my flat there is a tattoo machine. I am assuming that not everyone has a tattoo machine in their house, but there you go. I cannot draw, and for that very reason I would advise you not to let me anywhere near your body with a tattoo machine. However, my friend Lori is a very good artist, with a passion for tattooing. And although I have no tattoos, my flatmate Luke does. And he now has some by Lori. I have even been lucky enough to see tattooing while it happens. This is very interesting. I tried to take some pictures of it, because I enjoy taking pictures of things you don’t see every day. And even with a tattoo machine in my flat I don’t see that every day. The lighting was odd as it was dark outside, and we had all the lamps on in our front room. Luke pulled some fantastic faces while being tattooed. You could really see the pain in his eyes, and the scrunch of his face as Lori scratched the ink into his back. She was working to the pump of the Foo Fighters while he was holding his breath and grunting in pain with equal measure. If you shut your eyes it was almost like the noise of a rock concert where the entire crowd is unsure whether to stand in awe, or grunt and headbang, and yet they manage to all match each other in time perfectly. Lori worked quickly, punching the ink into Luke’s back with the humming tattoo machine. After a short time the purple anodised grip of the tattoo gun became tainted with both red blood and black ink. As the picture took shape on his back, the pictures I wasn’t supposed to be taking with my camera took shape too. I decided to use a long exposure to allow for the low light of the flat, and see what happened. A side effect of that that I am very happy with is that you can see how fast Lori was working, as she is a blur in the frame where Luke is a solid figure. This is one of my favourite pictures I have ever taken. Because it shows something unusual, because it has a subtle range of colour, because it shows two good friends, and mostly, because it was nothing like I imagined before I pressed the shutter.