Tahiti Tattoo Portraits | CGI & Photography Case Study | Dale May | New York
TAHITI TATTOO PORTRAITS
Services: Art Direction, Location Photography, Retouching | 2016
Chief Raymond Graffe & Tattoo Artist Maxime Panzera
The best light I ever used was an old, rusty halogen flood lamp in a concrete corridor in Tahiti. Great gear is nice to have. It doesn't make the picture for you."
THE CONCEPT
Some assignments find you. This one came with a plane ticket to Tahiti.
My friend Miki, owner of the Italian magazine Tattoo Life, invited me to travel to Tahiti to photograph the Polynesian Tattoo Convention. I don't shoot many events but a trip to Tahiti requires very little convincing. What sealed it was the promise of something genuinely rare: traditional Polynesian tattoo artists, tribal chiefs, and Tahitian royalty, all gathered in one place, all available to photograph. I packed light, one camera, two lenses, and my sense of adventure.
THE CHALLENGE
Everything about this shoot was unknown in advance. The exact location, the subjects, the light conditions, the access, none of it was confirmed until I was standing in front of it. For a photographer accustomed to controlling every variable in the frame, that could be paralyzing. For a photographer who spent years as a starving artist solving problems with whatever was available, it’s liberating.
There's something clarifying about having very few choices. You stop waiting for the perfect setup and start working with what's in front of you.
THE APPROACH
Day One: The Convention Floor
My wife Beth came along for the trip and turned out to be an invaluable collaborator on the ground. Outgoing and perceptive, she moved through the crowd rounding up interesting subjects for portraits while I shot. We spent two days at the convention photographing traditional Polynesian tattoo artists at work, tapping wooden sticks with needles into their clients' skin in a process known as tatau or u’i, that is simultaneously beautiful, sacred, painful, and deeply cultural process. I photographed it all with the curiosity of a spectator and the eye of someone who knew these images mattered.
Images from the Tahiti Tattoo Convention
My wife Beth May with Chief Gapotai (Left) and Chief Miko (Right)
Day Two: The Chiefs
On the second day I was given access to the tribal chiefs and some of Tahiti's most celebrated artists. It was raining intermittently, which pushed us to find cover just outside the main convention building. What I found there turned out to be better than anything I could have planned.
A concrete wall and overhang opened onto a garden, flooding the space with soft, diffused ambient daylight. And mounted in the ceiling above was a large halogen lamp, angled into the corner, old and rusty and completely immovable in terms of its vertical angle. I could rotate it but I couldn't change its pitch.
So I worked with it. I used the halogen as a warm key light and let the cooler daylight fall into the shadows as a natural fill, creating a two-tone lighting contrast I wouldn't have designed in advance but wouldn't trade for anything. Rather than repositioning the light, I repositioned my subjects, rotating them relative to the lamp to control the angle of light falling on their faces. The concrete corridor became my studio.
Behind The Scenes of my makeshift studio where I captured the award winning images.
THE RESULT
The portraits from that second day are among the strongest I've made on location anywhere. The combination of warm practical light and cool ambient fill gave the images a depth and dimensionality that felt cinematic without being constructed. Every frame was real, every subject was present, and every lighting decision was made in the moment with what was available.
The portraits and convention images were subsequently published in Tattoo Life Magazine, one of the most respected tattoo publications in the world, with a global readership of collectors, artists, and enthusiasts across Italy and beyond.
Chief Miko Krainer & Chief Raymond Graffe
Tattoo Artist Sousyu Hayashi & Tattoo Artist Fran Muñoz
Chief Gapotai
Tattoo Artist Chime & Tattoo Artist Roonui Anania
Chief Gapotai & Tattoo Artist Tautu Ellis
Tattoo Artist Raphael Ketterer
Estelle Anania & Tattoo Artist Max
THE EXPERIENCE
Tahiti gave me something no studio can fully replicate: genuine human experience, unscripted and uncontrolled. The tribal performances I witnessed, the friendships made, the process of watching an ancient art form practiced with absolute precision, none of that comes with the hybrid method. Life and cultural experience are their own kind of production value, and sometimes the most powerful images are the ones you had no hand in designing.
What this shoot also confirmed is something I believe deeply and return to often. The photographers who ask what camera or what lights produce the work they admire are asking the wrong question. The answer, in this case, was an old rusty halogen flood lamp in a concrete corridor in Tahiti. The image has nothing to do with the fixture and everything to do with knowing what to do with it.
Image of a tribal performance and fire walk.
CREDITS
Photography, Art Direction & Retouching: Dale May
Publication: Tattoo Life Magazine
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