Black and grey realism tattoo of a vintage rangefinder camera with the words the way I see the world in script beside it, on a forearm.

Vintage camera with quote on forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a detailed vintage rangefinder camera viewed from the front, with its lens, viewfinder and top controls rendered in fine linework and smooth grey shading. Two lines of handwritten script, reading the way I see and the world, sit above and below the camera. The image is black and white, and the camera fills the centre of the frame against the arm.

Realism Lettering Forearm Camera Lens Quote Script Lettering

Find an artist for this

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 keep at Carreg Hywel had lost its roof sometime before my grandmother was born, so the weather came and went through the upper floors as it pleased. I had been crouched in the chapel for an hour, waiting for the sun to slide across a broken window and lay a bar of gold over the flagstones. My father's rangefinder sat against my eye, its two windows lined up on a single stone arch, and I did not press the shutter until the light was exactly where he would have wanted it.

Keep reading

Dad always said the camera didn't see anything. It only agreed with you. He taught me to focus by watching the small window until the two halves of the image met, the way a bent line straightens when you look at it properly. Tourists photographed the gatehouse from the car park and drove off. I wanted the arch, the swallows going in and out of the nave, the ivy working the mortar loose one grain at a time.

When the film came back from the shop in Brecon, the man behind the counter held the strip up to the window and said the chapel had a ghost. In the corner of frame nine there was a smear of light, soft as breath on glass. I told him it was a light leak. He shrugged and said most ghosts were.

I kept the print anyway, and it is still in the drawer under my father's lens cloths. Frame nine is the one I take out most often. Dad would have said the camera only agreed with me. I have never been sure what else was agreeing that afternoon.