Practitioner Links

In this post i am linking my practitioners work and ideas to show how i have used them in my images.

I first started to look at fashion photography after finding some very good shots in magazines.
I looked at Mario Testino whose photographs that i have put in my sketch book show clean tones and polished finishes. There are very soft colours in his images, and doesn't confuse his work with outside objects, he purely focuses on the model and the context in which he wants to shoot them.
For example, with my images, i would photograph the models in front of a black or white background, to draw focus purely to the tattoos and the clients.

I also found an article on Neeta Madahar in a booklet about the National Media Museum.
I looked at her work and saw that she creates almost cartoon like photographs; the colours used being really bold and string yet theres a sense of softness in her images. Her photographs and her models' poses also reflect the 50's era of tattoos; the pin-ups and the old school style of tattooing, with strong pastel colours.

Annie Leibovitz is a photographer I admired while doing this project, as her photographs are mostly photoshopped and the fakeness of the images can be influenced into how i edit my images.
In photoshop, i can located the tattoos on an image, and then photoshop the highlighted area in the style of Annie Leibovitz; soft edges and an almost animated tone.

Craig Burton was the most predominant practitioner that influenced me as his work directly relates to my style of work.
He focuses directly on the tattoos and fills the frame with his subject.
His work is very rough and ready, and has edgy elements that directly link from Burton's music and tattoo photography to my style of tattoo photography.

I have a book entitled "1000 Tattoos" published by Taschen.
It features many images and text about the history of tattoos.
There are poses in the book that have inspired me to take test shots with my models, and to see how to show off the tattoos in all their glory.

I also looked at the work by film director Christopher Nolan.
I specifically looked at the film "The Dark Knight", to see the contrast between the edgy, dirty production against the colourful characters and costumes.
These screenshots taken from the film personifies in still how i wanted my images to turn out.
The contrast between darkness and light and the colours against the dark tones represent the character's struggle of identity, similar to the identities tattoos give to people; an expression and juxta position of our feelings at different points