Recently Published: Saira Hunjan for the Financial Times

Back in June I was commissioned by the FT to photograph tattoo artist/artist, Saira Hunjan for the FT's Working Lives section. I have a few friends that are tattoo artists and have a few pieces myself so I knew this was going to be a good shoot right away.

Saira now lives in Wales, after working in studios in London she is now preparing for her first solo art show. I've said it before but one of the best things about being a editorial photographer is being allowed a glimpse into other peoples lives for a short while. It becomes even better when that glimpse is into a subject or person that you are already interested in.

I knew I didn't want to over complicate things on this shoot, I wanted to just use mostly soft, natural light and let the subject carry the image. Fortunately, Saira had a great looking room with nice light pouring in through large windows. All I added was a large Lastolite white reflector to bounce some light back and that was it.

After we had shot a few frames and chatted about similarities in our work, we went outside to shoot a few more frames. As I occasionally work as a picture editor I know how useful having different options can be, with page layouts sometimes in flux until the last minute, giving a pic-ed a few options is always the way to go.

Below are a couple of frames plus the image as it was used. You can view more of my editorial photography here.