Will Robb Photography

This week hasn’t been as crazily busy as the last few months, hence the second blog post in a week which hasn’t been something I’ve been able to do for a while.

Last week I had a couple of articles come out on CNNGo Tokyo. One of them was about Horimyo, a Japanese traditional tattoo artist whom I blogged about before here. The full CNNGo Tokyo article and my write up can be found here , but the blog today is about the shots that didn’t make the article. I had already sold CNNGo with my pitch which included about 5 photos of Horimyo I had used elsewhere in the past, but I wanted to get something new to add in with the old shots, more for personal reasons than any professional necessity, so I headed off to Horimyo’s studio with Sue one night last month to update the stock I have of him. Seeing as how the one photo from the session I sent to CNNGo didn’t get published, I decided to put it up here with some others for the time being. Somewhere down the line I reckon I will be able to use them somewhere though.

I hadn’t shot in Horimyo’s studio(click for link to his homepage) for some time now, way more than 2 years I think. The last times I had been there I had just moved into digital and I was using a EOS 30D so I could get used to the whole digital thing, seems like a long time ago now.

Anyway, we went along with my usual kit, 5D mkII, 17-40mm lens, 24-70 lens, 50mm, two 580 EX speedlights and the reflector board. In the past Horimyo had always requested I didn’t use flash whilst he’s at work, but this time he was fine with me using that and the reflector board. Some people might think it a bit odd to be using a reflector board inside, especially as this was a night shoot, but as long as there is a light source that can be used, the reflector board comes in handy.

Horimyo’s client for the night was getting a bit of shading done on a tattoo of a koi (carp) on his right arm. Apparently the client had had a bit of a run in with someone a couple of nights before and there was some heavy bruising on his arm, luckily though he wasn’t getting any needle work done there so the pain was manageable. I couldn’t imagine anyone being tattooed on a bruise. Ouch.

Anyway, the time passed quickly in the studio. I started off by focusing on the area being tattooed, I did some cropped body shots, added a 2x magnifying filter to my 24-70mm lens to get some close ups of the needles at work. The needles were on the end of a bamboo pole and moving very quickly, so I had to use a fast shutter speed to get them frozen.

After the tattoo itself, I moved back a bit, put on my 50mm f1.2L lens, set the aperture to f2 where the lens is at it’s sharpest and the started to get some portraits of Horimyo at work with a very nice bit of background blur. I got one of his tattooed foot I liked a lot, I like the blur on his hands working the bamboo pole, even though he wasn’t so far away from his foot. I’ve been using my 50mm prime lens a lot recently for portrait work and I really am loving it.

After that I went for some wide shots, most of them from in close with my 17-40mm lens. For a few of the shots I put on my 1x magnifying filter just to give a bit more background blur.

The lighting from his studio lamp was pretty harsh, sometimes it was had to get the balance between where the lamp was shining on the client and how the light was on Horimyo himself, so a lot of the time I was using my flashes, sometimes on the camera, sometimes from the side with my transmitter box and both flashes and some of the times just using the light from the studio lamp and the reflector board. Sue took some snaps of me with her compact camera as I was working.

I liked the low position with the wide lens, it gave a nice feel to the proceedings, rather than focusing on just one point of a tattoo it gave a feel of the whole process. Being able to get in really close (as you can see in the above photos) with the wide lens and the magnifier gave some good results and this following pic is my favourite but wasn’t selected for the final CNNGo edit, that’s just how the cookie crumbles some times I guess.