How to take the perfect reference photo for a pet tattoo
We love animals and we love that you love your animals. Your photos of your pet are super adorable, but they may not make a great tattoo. Why? In this post, we’ll go over what makes a great reference photo and why. To get down to it, these are the four major things:
Lighting: Your pet is lit by natural light and has great contrast
Image quality/size: The image needs to have enough detail for the artist to use
Level: Shoot from your pet’s eye-level
Pose: Make sure you include the entire body, with an appropriate angle (no genitals please)
Lighting
What NOT to do:
You don’t want the light source to be coming from BEHIND your pet or drastically from the side. Doing this distorts or mutes your pet’s features.
What you SHOULD do:
With having great natural light coming in front of your pet, it’s really just *chef’s kiss*. Can you see the difference?
Image Quality/Size
When sending an image from your smart phone through an email, sometimes it reduces the image size and quality. The bigger the size, and the higher the resolution, the better your tattoo will be.
Tip: upload original photos from your computer
Level
While the photos are cute, you probably don’t want an aerial view of your pet on your arm.
What NOT to do:
What you SHOULD do:
Get an image from eye-level
Pose
What NOT to do:
Let’s just avoid tattooing any genitals onto your body.
What you SHOULD do:
Look at these distinguished gentlemen…and Lady. To avoid genitals from showing in any pictures, getting a picture where their arm is blocking that view, having their paws closer together, or even having them lay down all works.
Additionally, it’s great to have the entire body in the image. But if you only want the head, then we can do that too.
Examples:
References for the photos below:
Image 1,2,3 : IG @_youyeon_
Image 4: IG @zeal_tattoo
I have added some super cute pet tattoos from other artists mentioned above. The first image is an example of the angle of the pets — this is personal reference on if you want an aerial view of your pet on your arm forever. If you really want it, just let us know. The other three photos are examples of how to translate your image into a tattoo without including the entire image. Artists like to enclose your pet in different shapes or lines. So many options so make sure you do your own research to see what you like.
