Portraits of tattoo artists

Portrait session with Iron & Ink tattoo studio in Copenhagen

Iron & Ink is a pretty renowned Tattoo studio in Copenhagen (and now in Vejle, Oslo and London). I passed the tattoo store quite a few times and everytime I passed the studio, I would stare inside and think, what if I could make portraits of these tattoo artists who make these amazing beautiful tattoos on people. Being an artist myself and having tried my hand at painting (which unfortunately I left pretty early on, as the burden on my school studies got the better of it) I was always fascinated at how these artists made these beautiful motifs on people's bodies. It was as-if the body were their canvas and they just painted their imagination on it.

I approached the owner of the studio and told him about my idea of doing portraits of the artists. We disucssed about it and left it at a possibility in the near future. I left the studio and the whole project kind of got on the back-burner, meanwhile the tattoo studio got renovated as well.

I was thrilled when the owner of Iron & Ink called me recently and asked me if I wanted to take portraits of his artists. I just could not let go of this opportunity and jumped at it. I agreed, we decided dates and I finally got the chance to do this amazing shoot!

The other thing that continuously kept bothering me is the fact that I wanted to extensively use more of strobes on-location. For most of my portrait shooting lifespan, I've largely been a natural light shooter - especially when it came to on-location shoots. Now with a lot of options available for battery powered strobes that offer the required power as well as portability, I wanted to make sure I got more shots out of the camera with strobes invovled. As a photographer I want to continue to do that in order to have more control on lighting as well as give more character to my portraits.

With this I present to you the portraits that came out from this session. I did a mix of both indoor and outdoor portraits along with some working session pictures. These artists at the tattoo studio are just pure amazing, talented and super energetic! i was honoured to be able to photograph such talent!

Mona (left) and Marie (right) are twins and they run a tattoo company named Same Same - its probably not too difficult to guess why the would've kept that name...

A series of outdoor shots...

I also took a few shots around the studio of the artists working on their clients. Again these folks are super talented!

And finally the team shots...

The posed team shot...

The not so posed (real) team shot...

The full team outside the studio...

This was the last shot I took of the team before I bid this bundle of energy good bye! It was amazing fun shooting with these super talented and fun guys!

In case you're in Copenhagen, Vejle, Oslo or London or visiting any of these places anytime soon in the future and want to get a killer tattoo done, you can look them up at http://www.ironinktattoo.dk

I hope you liked the pictures; would love to get your reactions to this set in the comments below!

Cheers!

Deb

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