Dale May | NY Advertising Photographer, Director & CGI Artist

PDF CONTACT MOTION AWARDS FAQ Personal Work Lifestyle Healthcare / Pharma Commissions Portraits/Environmental Portraits/Studio Portraits/Stylized EXHIBITION - Lego Wars CGI Hybrid Photography/Photoreal Environments CGI Hybrid Photography/Product / Prop Home PRESS & NEWS CASE STUDIES/Proof Of Concept - Gangster CASE STUDIES/Horse Whisperer CASE STUDIES/Starlight Falls Motel CASE STUDIES/Clown Time Burger CASE STUDIES/Drama Queen CASE STUDIES/Tahiti Tattoo Portraits SELECTED CAMPAIGNS/PUMA Stardust Campaign SELECTED CAMPAIGNS/PUMA Crystalline Campaign SELECTED CAMPAIGNS/Rachel Rodgers CEO Celebrity / Entertainment Music Conceptual / Humor ABOUT CASE STUDIES/Genentech | Pharma CASE STUDIES/Camcevi | Pharma CASE STUDIES/1974 CASE STUDIES/Live Free Or Die AI AI/AI Workflow PROCESS/Hybrid Photography, CGI & Motion SOCIAL/IMDb SOCIAL/Vimeo SOCIAL/YouTube SOCIAL/Linkedin SOCIAL/Instagram SOCIAL/Facebook SOCIAL/Behance PROCESS/Meet Dale May

Tahiti Tattoo Portraits | Photography Case Study | Dale May, NY

TAHITI TATTOO PORTRAITS

"Some assignments find you. This one came with a plane ticket to Tahiti."

Services

Art Direction, Location Photography, Retouching | 2016

Scroll

"The best light I ever used was an old, rusty halogen flood lamp in a concrete corridor in Tahiti. Great gear is nice to have. It doesn't make the picture for you."

Tahiti Tattoo Portraits is an editorial portrait series created by Dale May on the island of Tahiti, documenting Polynesian tribal chiefs and traditional tattoo artists at the Polynesian Tattoo Convention. Photographed with a makeshift outdoor studio using available light and a single halogen, the series earned an International Photography Awards Honorable Mention in 2016 and was published in Tattoo Life Magazine. It demonstrates that Dale's portrait methodology produces compelling work regardless of budget, location, or production infrastructure.

THE CONCEPT

My friend Miki, owner of the Italian magazine Tattoo Life, invited me to travel to Tahiti to photograph the Polynesian Tattoo Convention. I don't shoot many events but a trip to Tahiti requires very little convincing. What sealed it was the promise of something genuinely rare: traditional Polynesian tattoo artists, tribal chiefs, and Tahitian royalty, all gathered in one place, all available to photograph. I packed light, one camera, two lenses, and my sense of adventure.

THE CHALLENGE

Everything about this shoot was unknown in advance. The exact location, the subjects, the light conditions, the access, none of it was confirmed until I was standing in front of it. For a photographer accustomed to controlling every variable in the frame, that could be paralyzing. For a photographer who spent years as a starving artist solving problems with whatever was available, it's liberating.

There's something clarifying about having very few choices. You stop waiting for the perfect setup and start working with what's in front of you.

THE APPROACH

Day One: The Convention Floor

My wife Beth came along for the trip and turned out to be an invaluable collaborator on the ground. Outgoing and perceptive, she moved through the crowd rounding up interesting subjects for portraits while I shot. We spent two days at the convention photographing traditional Polynesian tattoo artists at work, tapping wooden sticks with needles into their clients' skin in a process known as tatau or u'i, simultaneously beautiful, sacred, painful, and deeply cultural. I photographed it all with the curiosity of a spectator and the eye of someone who knew these images mattered.

Behind the scenes at the Polynesian Tattoo Convention in Tahiti: traditional tattoo artists at work during the convention and tribal performance. Location photography by Dale May.

Behind the scenes at the Polynesian Tattoo Convention in Tahiti: traditional tattoo artists at work during the convention. Location photography by Dale May.

Behind the scenes at the Polynesian Tattoo Convention in Tahiti: Beth May with Chief Gapotai on the left and Chief Miko on the right. Location photography by Dale May.

My wife Beth May with Chief Gapotai (Left) and Chief Miko (Right)

Day Two: The Chiefs

On the second day I was given access to the tribal chiefs and some of Tahiti's most celebrated artists. It was raining intermittently, which pushed us to find cover just outside the main convention building. What I found there turned out to be better than anything I could have planned.

A concrete wall and overhang opened onto a garden, flooding the space with soft, diffused ambient daylight. And mounted in the ceiling above was a large halogen lamp, angled into the corner, old and rusty and completely immovable in terms of its vertical angle. I could rotate it but I couldn't change its pitch.

So I worked with it. I used the halogen as a warm key light and let the cooler daylight fall into the shadows as a natural fill, creating a two-tone lighting contrast I wouldn't have designed in advance but wouldn't trade for anything. Rather than repositioning the light, I repositioned my subjects, rotating them relative to the lamp to control the angle of light falling on their faces. The concrete corridor became my studio.

Behind the scenes: Dale May's makeshift studio in the concrete corridor outside the Polynesian Tattoo Convention, Tahiti, where the award-winning portrait series was photographed using a halogen flood lamp and natural daylight fill.

Behind the scenes of my makeshift studio where I captured the award winning images.

THE RESULT

The portraits from that second day are among the strongest I've made on location anywhere. The combination of warm practical light and cool ambient fill gave the images a depth and dimensionality that felt cinematic without being constructed. Every frame was real, every subject was present, and every lighting decision was made in the moment with what was available.

The portraits and convention images were subsequently published in Tattoo Life Magazine, one of the most respected tattoo publications in the world, with a global readership of collectors, artists, and enthusiasts across Italy and beyond.

The series earned recognition from the International Photography Awards in 2016, with an Honorable Mention in the Family of Man category for the portrait of High Chief Raymond Graffe, the opening image of this series.

THE PORTRAITS

Chief Raymond Graffe

Tattoo Artist Maxime Panzera

Chief Miko Krainer

Chief Raymond Graffe

Tattoo Artist Sousyu Hayashi

Tattoo Artist Fran Muñoz

Chief Gapotai

Tattoo Artist Chime

Tattoo Artist Roonui Anania

Chief Gapotai

Tattoo Artist Tautu Ellis

Tattoo Artist Raphael Ketterer

Estelle Anania

Tattoo Artist Max

THE EXPERIENCE

Tahiti gave me something no studio can fully replicate: genuine human experience, unscripted and uncontrolled. The tribal performances I witnessed, the friendships made, the process of watching an ancient art form practiced with absolute precision, none of that comes with the hybrid method. Life and cultural experience are their own kind of production value, and sometimes the most powerful images are the ones you had no hand in designing.

What this shoot also confirmed is something I believe deeply and return to often. The photographers who ask what camera or what lights produce the work they admire are asking the wrong question. The answer, in this case, was an old rusty halogen flood lamp in a concrete corridor in Tahiti. The image has nothing to do with the fixture and everything to do with knowing what to do with it.

Tahiti Tattoo Convention: Polynesian tribal performance and fire walk ceremony photographed by Dale May at the Polynesian Tattoo Convention in Tahiti.

Credits

Photography, Art Direction & Retouching: Dale May

Publication: Tattoo Life Magazine

Working with Dale

I'm known for award-winning hybrid photography that combines studio work, photorealistic CGI, and AI-driven production. But every project begins with the same foundation: a strong portrait. Before the environments are built and the worlds take shape, the focus is on capturing an authentic, compelling human presence. Portraiture is where my career began, and it remains at the heart of everything I do. This Tahiti Tattoo series, recognized by the International Photography Awards, returns to those roots: environmental portraits made on location in Tahiti that honor the artistry, culture, and individuality of their subjects through the power of portrait photography alone.

To discuss your next project, get in touch or see more Environmental Portrait work.

← 1974