I haven’t even finished editing this session yet – I just took this photo a few days ago.
But, I could not, in good conscience, keep this photo to myself, with all of the people out there needing smiles in the world.
There is something about a newborn baby’s innocence and good smell and perfect-ness that makes you forget anything but good.
So, if you need a smile, I’m sure this ten day old bundle of perfect love has one he can spare for you. Sweet guy.
Jeff Madonna is a nerd. Not just a nerd, a super nerd. And proud of it. He’s hoping to school his young daughter, Marlee, in the way of the nerd as well. He and his wife, Erin, spend all of their free time doing lots of nerdy things with her. He was an Eagle Scout, so doing things like making sure she knows the names of the trees in Latin, for example. They’re working on her Iron Man costume for Comic Con in June, and she has a Firefly hat. So, they’re on their way. (Jeff had to explain Firefly to me, though. As a Nathan Fillion lover myself, I knew he was in it, but didn’t realize it was a space western.) Jeff is a comic guy, preferring aliens and cartoons in his down time, although he ranked Airwolf nearly as high as Transformers as the best tv show of his youth.
The first tattoo that Jeff ever did was a rose on his own leg. He was told that one should practice on themselves so that they’d know how it felt to be tattooed by them. He learned a lot from this tattoo, but the most important thing he learned was that the machine should never go silent. You’ll notice that Jeff doesn’t have a lot of tattoos on his hands, his neck, anywhere visible. He said that Carl would always tell him that you don’t want your hands tattooed in case you ever have to go in front of a judge. Jeff himself tells younger people who come to him that they should think about the kind of jobs they want to do before they tattoo their hands.
Jeff is a big history guy. Whether researching the Hot Stuff Devil comics of the 50s and pedal cars of that age or to ensure the correctness and authenticity for a client’s Viking sleeve, Jeff definitely pours himself into it one hundred percent. Some people collect Pez dispensers, but Jeff and his wife Erin collect books. Their living space in their home is lined with bookshelves, as they both love to read everything they can get their hands on. He has learned a lot about drawing but also a lot about the history of tattooing as well. It seems to me like he feels that that pays respect to those who went before him and that he feels that a tattooer should know the history.
We definitely talked a bunch of non-tattoo stuff too, from all of the cool ways he helps make stuff for his wife’s classroom, to the time he spent as an armored car driver (ok, an armored Ford Escort driver, but let’s not split hairs), religion, the educational system, our children and the movie Percy Johnson, Lightening Thief. He explained to me how ATMs work and how they get filled, which is more fascinating than I would have imagined. He’s probably a really good guy to have around because he can take an ATM machine apart with a pen knife, so you never know when that could come in handy.
Jeff’s a really nice and really smart guy. He’s endearingly crazy about his wife, who he describes as his best buddy, and he told me about how lucky he was that she picked him to guard in a basketball game when she was a teeny little lady with dreads. The time went by quickly when we were chatting – I could imagine that a six hour tattoo wouldn’t be so bad with Jeff’s interesting stories to keep your mind occupied.
Jeff says he primarily does Japanese work and American traditional tattooing but with a twist, because he likes to do the color blending and also fine line work. He is starting to do a lot more geeky tattoos lately, like the 20-sided die he recently completed on a walk-in client. Scroll down to see more of Jeff’s work below, as well as photos of him in the area around his shop, Poppycock Tattoo in Wilmington, Delaware.
“Canvas is for old people”, said one of my favorite clients ever to me at our ordering session. “I can’t believe anyone still has these.” I had sort of brought it out sheepishly at the end of showing her my product offerings, because I had one, and because it was on my price list. Who wouldn’t show someone everything on their price list, right? I thought I should, even though I had never had anyone actually order one. I had kicked around the idea of getting rid of canvases, but this was kind of early on, and I thought that Professional Photographers had to offer canvas.
Except that I’d never had anyone buy one.
And then I showed her the metal print.
When I first saw the metal print myself, swoon. It was like no product I’d seen before to offer my clients. (Um, or my own walls, frankly!) I sit looking now at one of the first photos I fell in love with from a session, a tattoo artist and his teeny girl. This one below. I just LOVE metal prints.
What is a metal print, you ask?
A metal print is created when the lab takes the image and through some fancy high heat technology, fuses it onto a piece of metal.
The thickness is shown below.
I always get them with rounded corners, so that no one puts their eye out. (Safety first, you know.)
They come all ready to hang with a float block, which pops it off the wall and requires just a single nail to hang it. You can slide it along the channel/groove, so it doesn’t have to be a precisely, exactly perfectly-chosen nail, either.
Just do your best, and then slide it along the channel into place.
The best part about them is that it’s like these were created for my images. Seriously. I love how my photos look on these. Match made in heaven.
I don’t offer a ton of specialty products to wade through, but I know something awesome when I see it – and then I have to make it available to my peeps.
So, while canvas isn’t just for old people, metal prints are definitely for awesome ones.
You’ll probably want at least one (wall display?) from your next session!
I love the look of urban photography – photos where you’re in the city and it shows, whether it’s for a maternity session or a family session.
So, I give you this. A couple in love, in front of a home they renovated to make their own, and where they are going to raise that little one when he or she arrives.
What we did not include in the shoot: Her parents’ two huge Rottweilers. I’m kind of a loser for being scared to get out of the car, considering I own two pit bulls, but I was sitting in the car laughing at myself until the Daddy in this family came to “rescue” me. Then the dogs tried to lick me to death. Fail, Jamie. Fail.
What we did: one sweet little darling whose parents were so taken with her that it was a treat to see.
I’m pretty sure that this sweet girl is destined to be a Daddy’s girl – it was easy to see how smitten with her he is.
And, why wouldn’t you be? She is beautiful (please don’t miss the teeny little light patch in her hair. Love it!)
You’re really here for the pictures, though, right? Okay, enough outta me, here they are:
H Family, thank you so much for trusting these photos to me! I appreciate it very much and hope you love these photos as much as I loved creating them for you.
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