We’ve had a few autumnal afternoons of lovely sunshine, so I took Ruby on another long afternoon walk. My wife suggested I take her to Pets at Home in Daybrook to see if they had any bargains.
The walk takes me past a tattoo shop , “The Tattoo Emporium”. As I walked by I took a glance inside to see if any artists were present. We made our way to the pet shop and Ruby had some lovely sniffs at the pet food section.
On the way back we passed the Emporium again and two tattoo artists were having a cigarette break outside the shop. I couldn’t pass by without asking one of them for a photo, so I introduced myself to both of them.
This is Ben, who was up for a little shoot. It ws a bright sunny afternoon so I asked Ben to move to the side of the building as it was in the shade. Ben struck up a pose looking into the distance away from the camera and I took a few shots. I then asked him to hold the stance but look towards the camera.
Ben been a tattoo artist for over seven years and loves it. In fact he said he could never imagine doing anything else. He had worked at the Emporium for over a year but would be soon moving to a shop on Woodborough Road (a long road that leads out of the city to the affluent area of Mapperley.
I showed Ben the images on the camera and told him it was a cracking set of photos as the tones of the ink matched the brick colours. I gave Ben one of my cards and told him to contact me for the photos.
We shook hands and I thanked Ben for the phots. He told me it had been “n absolute pleasure Phil”
I shot this using a vintage Yashica ML 50mm f1.7 lens, which I bought last December from a Bric a Brac shop. This version of the Japanese lens has Zeiss glass and as you can see it takes cracking shots (this was f5.6)
Can I point out that I shot this (and my previous stranger Martin) with a camera in one hand and a dog lead with Ruby in the other hand !
Thanks for being stranger number 190 Ben, good luck when you move to a new studio.
Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page
https://www.flickr.com/groups/100strangers
My own strangers can be seen here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/57144254@N08/albums/72157657822400168
