For years I made a living shooting environmental portraits for various magazines I was an editorial photography machine. I still enjoy photographing people they just don’t take direction as well as a motorcycle in a studio setting.

This past weekend my friend Natan invited me down to the Boston Tattoo Convention to hang out and take some photos.  Everyone can take a photo of someones tattoo while they are standing there on stage, that’s not challenging and in my opinion that’s not art it’s merely acting as a photo copier. The real fun in taking photos at a tattoo convention is in telling the story of the moment.

Boston Tattoo Convention 2009

Tips to taking photos at a tattoo convention

1. Available light at tattoo conventions sucks so bring your own or learn to work with what you are given.  And remember the artist is working so if you are going to use flash ASK FIRST.

Ink in the dark

A little fill flash (-2 stops) brought this scene back from being far too dark.  I could have used a bit more but I wanted  to keep the depth, moodiness and available light feel.

Enjoying the ink

2. Take the time to talk to your subject and build a rapport

JaySki at work

3. Work the angles.  The above photo is a great example of angling your photo to take advantage of  what is going on in the foreground, middle and background of the scene.

4. It’s about the people. In addition to vending some of his wares Scott was shooting some video and I took this photo of him enjoying the show.

Working hard?

5. Sometimes even an artists down time tells a story.

Michah

5. Try and capture interesting moments in the tattoo process.  I came across Jae Audette, freehand drawing a traditional American tattoo outline on a client with a sharpie.

freehand traditional

6. Even when shooting wide open and with a high ISO blur can still happen due to the bad lighting in most convention locations.  Know movement will happen and use it to your advantage, by showing the artist plying his trade.

Natan tattooing

7. Space at a tattoo convention is always limited so you will tend to see the same photo time and time again.  Stations are laid out so an artist can best work on someone and not for optimal photo taking.  If you see a setting that works good for a photo keep an eye on it and like waiting for the right light when shooting a landscape, sooner or later it will pay off for you.

some detail work

More photos from the 8th annual Boston Tattoo Convention can be found on my flickr page.

During  a conversation the other day with a fellow photographer we spoke about pinhole cameras.  Any student of photography has probably made and used a pinhole camera, its about as old school as you can get.

The camera evolved from a device called the Camera Obscura, basically a room with a pinhole in it that allowed light in and projected it on the opposite wall thereby allowing an artist to trace or paint what he saw. The image that is projected is upside down but color and perspective is maintained.  This lead to a new era of realism in painting and eventually some new newfangled device called a camera. </historylesson>

What is a pinhole camera?

As the name suggests a pinhole camera is a camera (light tight box) with a pinhole for a lens. This is as simple as it gets. It is basically a miniaturized version of the camera obscura. At its most raw form there are no mechanical shutters, apertures, dials, knobs or settings of any kind.

Pinhole Cameras – a how to

I made my first pinhole camera to hold an 11×14 piece of photographic paper. I used a cardboard box that restaurants would get from soda companies that holds the bags of syrup to make a fountain drink, it was the perfect size to hold my large piece of paper. Then I cut a small hole on the opposite side of where the paper lives and covered that hole with a square piece of aluminum cut from a soda can. I poked a hole through the metal and my camera was made.

Paper was loaded into the box in the darkroom then the box was taped up to block out any stray light. I placed my finger over the pinhole and went outside.  My ISO was that of my paper and I guessed my aperture to be around f250, did the math let in light for 30 seconds and developed my film.

Pinhole cameras without film, DSLR Pinhole

I no-longer have a darkroom at my disposal but that didn’t stop me from building a new pinhole camera.  This one costs slightly more than my old pinhole but is just as easy to make.

• Start with a DSLR
• drill a small pinhole in a body cap or  cover the lens hole with a piece of aluminum foil and put a pin hole in that, I used a beer can (PBR) but any soda can would work as well
• set your camera to manual and assume your aperture is very small (f200 -f300) and take a test shot
• refine your exposure from there
• You can take your pinhole DSLR to the next level if you want by adding a macro extension or tele converter to the mix.

My first attempt using a pinhole DSLR was less than stellar. I just slapped the aluminum foil over my camera  held it in place with a rubber-band and poked the hole with a toothpick. Its not pretty but that’s not the point, this was just a test.

down an dirty pinhole DSLR

I ran out and shot the below image at 1/4 a second with the camera set to ISO 100. My initial thoughts are that the pinhole is WAY too big and that there is too much camera shake.

DSLR Pinhole photography

With the initial test a success it was now time to refine my camera.  I grabbed a body cover (Nikon BF-1a)  I had kicking around and drilled a hole through the middle of it.  I then cut a square out of a beer can and fitted it on the body cap, taping it all around.  With a fairly small needle I made a hole giving me an effective f-stop of f/180.

Drilling the body cap

cutting a PBR for the lens

Making a pinhole camera

I went back out and did test #2 using the body cap/beer can method.  At first the results didn’t impress me  as there still was still significant blur even using a tripod.  However upon closer inspection one can see that the image is much sharper by looking at the middle window where “Town Hall” sign is.  That aberration is merely camera shake.

Second pinhole test

For test #3, my final test,  I wanted a bit more depth of field so I remade the pinhole with the smallest needle I could find.  I also used a setting on my Nikon D300 that allows the mirror to lock up for 3 seconds prior to the shutter firing, thereby reducing camera shake even further.  Now when you look at the words “Town Hall” you can see them much more clearly.

Test #3

I did notice a few “dead” spots on the image when using this lens but I’m chalking that up to the hole not being perfectly circular. I’m not going to bore you with the other 20 test shots I took but this PBR pinhole works just like any other pinhole camera. I tested it out with on-camera flash, studio strobes and even shot some HDR (with the PRB DSLR). I’m looking forward to keeping this in my camera bag and using it when my regular lenses just aren’t seeing things they way I want.