Black and grey tattoo of a large flower with leaves and a shutter-like lens shape on the inner forearm of a standing person in a dark room.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Flower and lens tattoo on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large flower with a layered, geometric centre sits on the forearm, with pointed leaves spreading from it and a shutter or aperture shape curling down towards the wrist. The linework is bold and the shading is solid black with grey detail, giving the design a graphic, stencil-like finish. The photograph is black and white, with the arm lit against a dark background and a dark shirt and jeans, with keys hanging from a belt loop.

Botanical Geometric Forearm Flower Leaves Lens Camera

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The camera had been my father's before it was mine, and when the pit closed that winter he sold everything in the front room except that. I was nine and not allowed to touch the brass ring that opened the little iris inside the lens. I watched his thumb do it instead, slow as a clock, letting in only as much light as the picture could bear.

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The dahlias in Mrs Ackroyd's back yard were the only things on Cinder Row that grew without coal dust settling on them, so every Sunday we carried the box round her wall. Dad fiddled the stop until the petals went from grey to black, and I held the leaves still with a clothes peg. He said a flower was easy to take because it could never argue with you.

The week the men came up from the Hollin seam for the last time, the yard had gone to frost and there were no dahlias left. Dad took the cap off anyway and pointed the camera at the lamp-room door, where the men stood in a line with their tins. He counted to thirty with his thumb resting on the release, then did not press it. "Some things you only let in with your head," he said, and folded the bellows shut.

I still have the plate, though it is blank, and I keep it in a drawer beside the key to the house we left. When the grandchildren ask why the picture is empty, I tell them it came out perfectly.