Assignment five: Personal project.

At the beginning of Digital Photographic Practise I had to choose a theme for a personal project as my final assignment of this section.

Before I explain why I chose the subject I did and how the assignment went I thought I would write a few lines on the history of tattoos.
The royal navy introduced tattoos to this country in the later 1700's and the word tattoo was introduced into the English language by Captain James Cook, it comes from the Tahitian word 'tatau'.

Old school tattoos were used amongst sailors and included swallows on the chest the first one being done at the start of the voyage and the second one at the end of the voyage. The swallow represented love and affection to loved ones as a symbolisation of returning.   Other favourites included girls in sailor hats and dice, they were also classed as talismans in the early days by sailors who tend to be superstitious.  Over the years tattoos have been favoured by all sections of society from royalty (the future Edward VII is reputed to have had a Jerusalem cross.  Tattoos are used by criminals many of who view them as a badge of honour which they have had done to mark various events in their life from joining gangs to going to prison. David Beckham is considered to be responsible for the trend of having your children's names tattooed on your body.

They are popular amongst males and females and although tattoos go in and out of fashion they will all ways have a place within the Royal Navy albeit covered by uniforms most of the time.

Having explained a bit about tattoos I will now showcase my photographs taken of several people over several days, my methods behind the photographs and also the work involved in the production of the photographs.

Above is the start of my work flow I took many photographs then marked them and sorted out the ones I thought I would be most likely to use.

One thing I did notice, having taken my photographs I started to look through a tattoo magazine called 'totally tattoo' was that the majority of the back grounds were black where as I had used a white back ground, I therefore decided to paint the back ground on one my photographs and see if it made the art work show up more.

Sally has several tattoos the roses were done in memory of her parents who have both sadly passed away. I opened the photograph in elements  and created a duplicate layer I then used the quick selection tool to separate Sally from the background and using the paint brush tool I made the background whiter. finally after flattening the layers I used the un sharp tool to finish the photograph.

the un sharp mask

Before I started work.
 

When I started this project I decided I didn't want either a collection of people 'showing off' their tattoos or just close up photographs of the tattoos but rather a mixture of the two.  With this thought in mind I took a close up of the roses Sally had on her back,

I started by cropping the photograph to remove as much possible of the bird the one side as I didn't want anything to detract from the roses, I left the butterfly as I think this looked like it was part of the design but the bird almost looked separate.  I then used a mixture of the cloning and spot healing brushes to remove the remains of the bird, adjusted the brightness slightly in layers and finally used the un sharp mask.

My second model has a tattoo of a lock on her back this is part of a set her husband having the key.I used my 50 mm lens for this and made a couple of small adjustments to the clarity and exposure in raw before opening the file in elements and masking off the area I didn't want to touch I made sure the background was white and even in colour using the paint brush tool, I also used the burn tool at 1% to adjust the mid tones slightly. The healing brush was used to remove strap marks and after flattening the image the un sharp mask was the final adjustment made.

The unsharp tool in use.

This is the key to lock of the above tattoo, there is a C at the bottom of the key which is the models wife's initial. for this particular photograph I didn't do a lot of post production work, just a small amount of cropping to the original photograph, then the brightness and contrast levels were adjusted again finishing with the un sharp mask.

The next two photographs show the couple these tattoos belong to, one is in colour the other in black and white.

Although I wanted to show the couple together so it is possible to view the tattoos as they are meant to be seen, I didn't necessarily need to show too much of their faces. In the black and white one Andy is facing towards the camera whilst Cheryl is shown with her back to me, I think this one is slightly harsher with more shadow falling between the two of them. I choose to use the burn tool  at 7%over the tattoos after I had done a conversion from colour to black and white to really make the tattoos stand out. I think this has worked particularly well on the key.

In using the burn tool I found it is easier to start with a low number sometimes just 1% and then go over the area a few times to get the look I wanted rather than pick a  higher percentage then have to use the dodge tool as its too dark and I need to try and lighten it again.

The colour photograph has  a more intimate look and feel about it, as the tattoos have special meaning to the couple I wanted to try to convey this in the photograph. After several attempts where we all ended up laughing when I said I wanted them to look at each other, I should add at this point they are very good friends of mine, I don't normally end up laughing so much when I take photographs of people, I finally captured this one. Although  Cheryl is in profile it is possible to see the real bond between two people that  are really happy and comfortable with each other something that is borne out with their choice of tattoos.

The next photograph is of Andy on his own, This time the writing down his back spells out Cheryl.

 As it is possible to see from the screen shot above I took this in colour but decided that it would look better as a black and white photograph. This was also an older tattoo and had fade slightly so again I decided to use the burn tool across the tattoo to make sure that the writing would be clearer, I also adjusted the brightness and contrast to make it less high key.

The next two photographs are of Nick, he is  designed his own tattoo. 

When I asked Nick what his inspiration was he told me that he is a steam punk and that he also collects pocket watches. The tattoo was done for his 18th birthday and the clock face shows the time of his birth and the wings signify that time flys. I wanted to have a brightness around his face with the bottom half of the photograph slightly darker, just to put a bit of artistic flare (hopefully) on the photograph.

I used the quick selection mask to allow me to work on parts of the image at a time , I also worked in layers and darkened the tattoo and also Nicks cheeks which were a bit too bright, the above screen shot show the un sharp tool.

As I had done previously with Sally I took a close up of the tattoo, I had to crop the original photograph slightly to remove unwanted parts in the photograph. I used the hue and saturation sliders this time and again the quick selection tool to allow me to work on just the area of the tattoo.  I had to clone a small amount of green in the top right hand corner as there was an area of brightness I found distracting.

This one I wanted to try something a bit different, I not only converted the photograph to black and white I also changed the background from white to black, I didn't want Becky to show any real expression on her face, I wanted the saying 'look beyond what you see' to speak for itself. I was almost thinking about showing just the torso part but I wasn't so keen when I tried it.

Becky is also the owner of the final tattoo I have chosen to include, this one goes along her abdomen and round her side slightly.

This is just a large section of the tattoo, Becky wasn't comfortable revealing any more of it, which I understood and didn't want to push the issue as she had been kind enough to allow me to photograph it in the first place.
I used the clone tool to remove a small amount of knicker  line that was showing as I thought  it a bit distracting  I also used the burn tool again to darken the art work.

One thing I did find was that the older the tattoo the more work I needed to do in post production to get the effect I was looking for, particularly the black and white ones.

There was several tools that I found myself using in elements mostly the un sharp and burn tools, the last action I performed on each was the use of the un sharp mask.

I now need to write a reflective account of how it all went, I have given plenty of thought to this and some of this report may be musing on my discoveries along the way.

At the start of Digital Photographic Practice I had to decide on a personal project for my final assignment of this section.  After several different ideas I finally settled on tattoos. When I originally made my choice I couldn't have said why. I don't have and I doubt I ever will have a tattoo, but I do admire the art work of a lot of them.

Once I started to look into the history behind them I found that the Royal Navy were responsible for bringing tattoos to this county. These started off by being Marie inspired markings but these later developed and besides the  pin up girls and anchors it was usual to have a swallow tattooed on their chest at the end of their first voyage followed by a second one after their second voyage. I do have strong naval ties and wonder if its a subconscious choice.

I looked at various websites including one called London Tattoos this was a project by Alex McNaughton, http://www.londontattoosbook.com/ which shows Londoners and their tattoos being a reflection of their unique personality.
Some of his models didn't want to justify why they had them done, however  the one photograph that stuck in my mind was of a professor who had an incurable disease and his tattoos pictate that. Each person is photographed in their normal clothing and then again semi clothed to show their tattoos.


I also looked at magazines including Total Tattoo they also have a website www.totaltattoo.co.uk for ideas on how to photograph tattoos, I noticed that a lot of them were shown on a dark or black background and this was the inspiration of my photograph of Becky.

Referring back to the comment about  Londoners and their tattoos I found this lead me on to ask myself do we see people differently because of them? . I have to say I have been guilty of this in the past, I think partly because of the reputation that tattoos have gained in recent years as belonging mainly to gang members and criminals. One of my models has the words 'look beyond what you see' on her arm, how many of us really do this? I started to think about the people that I know who have 'ink art work'  on their bodies and I realised that they are all friendly people and happy to help out with this project. 

Another website I looked at was by photographer 'Sergi Vasilian' he undertook to photograph inmates in prisons and reform  settlements in Russia over a period of several years, this site explains how tattoos are used to denote inmates 'ranks' and it is not unusual for them to try to get moved to prisons where the best tattoo artists are. I found this site quite disturbing and it bore out my original opinion of people with tattoos. An opinion I was glad to have changed as I went through.

The final part to this is did I have any technical problems, was I happy over all with it and could I have done anything differently?

I had no real problems with the photography once I had made my mind up how I wanted to show them, just a couple of times I had trouble trying to photograph the whole art work but nothing I couldn't resolve.  Overall I am happy with the project, if I undertook it again I would probably just photograph the tattoos and also use a black back ground as I think this works better.


Below is my original workflow sections.

I have now come to the end of Digital Photographic Practice, all that remains now is for me to check over this blog and send it the final assignment to my tutor for comment.

The photograph below was not taken as part of this section but I did take it during this course and is one of my favourite tattoo shots I have taken.

The butterfly has the names of her children and future husband around it, I took it originally in colour but like the black and white conversion, its just a shame I was unable to photograph her again for this section.
I have received my feedback from my tutor, I always find this to be a worrying time, I think some of the worry is a confidence issue, which is something I need to try and address as I go through the course.

My tutor has said the assignment is generally good but he finds the work a bit disjointed, partly because I have taken some of the photographs on a white background and others aren't also some of the men are in tee shirts some are not. He has said there are a couple of shots on the thumbnail sheet which look better, I am therefore going to take a look at these and add to the blog.

Below are some of the adjustments I have processed I hope you enjoy looking at these new images.

I have process the two photographs the tutor mentioned so that both poses are the same and although I like the fact that both poses are the same I feel that the emphasis of the tattoo is lost in the top photograph.

I also reprocessed the black and white photograph as a high key photograph, I do like this and although I accept this I still like my original shot as although there is a variance of tones, I liked the slightly arty feel to the shot. I was also under impression that photography is partly about personal preference. Having re read some of my book 'The photograph as contemporary art' by Charlotte cotton the details of which as listed under my books page, I looked in particular at a photograph by 'Jeff Wall' called 'passerby' I questioned the tones of this photograph and in particular the bright area of the stop sign which looked too bright compared with the rest of the left hand side of the photograph.  On further reading I found a photograph which actual was a self portrait by 'Ni Haifeng'
This shows his torso painted with eighteenth century Chinese porcelain motifs. Underneath the sailing ship are words written almost as if they are on a museum label, I found this shot interesting as it was taken the same way as some of mine with the face not been shown. I think this makes the tattoo more prominent.

One final comment from my tutor he said its a shame I didn't include modern day examples of naval tattoos, unfortunately I was unable to do this as my son is deployed at the moment and wouldn't be back in time for me to photograph anyone from his ship,, I did ask him however about the traditions and was told that there are no 'naval' tattoos as such any more and people just have what they like, this is within the realms of decently and naked ones are not allowed.