Family Pictures in a Tattoo Shop: Wei-Lin, Justin, and Jaydon

My cousin Wei-Lin has never had professional photos taken with her family. (Even at her wedding: their photographer didn’t show up, and they had to make do with friends’ and family’s snapshots. Yikes.) So when she asked if I would take some family pictures of her with her husband Justin and son Jaydon, I jumped at the chance.

Wei-Lin likes playful photos, and wanted to do a mix of formal-ish and informal/photojournalistic pictures. We were able to start at Justin’s tattoo shop (Faith Tattoo, in Santa Rosa, CA), and I tried finding angles that played off the contrast between typical family photos and the cool surroundings.

Jaydon feigned shyness, but actually hammed it up pretty well.

Wei-Lin also claimed to be shy in front of the camera. Yeah, right.

 

After a few more candids, we tried to convince Jaydon that it would be fun if he grabbed his dad’s tattoo gear and pretended to give one of them a tattoo. Nope – wasn’t interested. So I came up with the idea of having him draw on his mom’s arm (as if he were giving her a tattoo). Permission to draw on mom’s arm? Oh, yeah – he was all for that.

I love having a variety of spots to shoot in (rather than just exchanging the gray background for a blue one), and we finished up back at their house with a couple of straightforward pics in front of their fireplace.

A great afternoon with a cool family, and we got an awesome selection of shots.