Feature on tattooing

This History of the tattoo

Tattoos are everywhere. They are not just a symbol of rebellious statutory and deviant gangs and crimes but now are now seen as an expression of artistic ways. Over the last few years we have seen a renaissance in the art of tattooing. For many people tattoos are the love of art, they get tattoos based on the things they like or have seen around. Sometimes they are symbols of dreams, fantasies or religion. Tattoos should be meaningful as they are personal and are used to decorate the body.

Body modification has been around for a long time, and their presence has flourished and declined throughout time depending on the time of period. Tattoos are almost as old as mankind and can be dated back as far as 38,000 BC. Tattoos were first founded in places like Egypt, India, Rome, Japan and China. People used to fall into pigment-carrying and sharp instruments such as charcoaled branches. The word tattoo originated from the Tahitian word ‘tatu’ which means to mark something. It also comes from the Polynesian word ‘ta’ which means to strike something. The principle of tattooing varies from culture to culture depending on the time line.

A tattooist who has been in the artistic business for 24 years owns a tattoo parlour ‘Steel City Tattooing’ on London Road.

Richard Howard had his first tattoo when he was 14 years old and since then became fascinated with the arty theme/field. This is when he decided to open up his own tattoo parlour.

The most challenging tattoos to do are on faces as it is unique and represents the individual. He said: “Some people have the tear drops tattooed on their face this signifies that they have served time in prison, because they have killed a person.”

The tattooist has also tattooed Sheffield’s British actor Sean Bean who had ‘Sheffield United’ written on his wrist. As Celtics and Tribals were once a popular design, stars are now considered to be in style.

When caring for your tattoo you have to be careful of any infections. Hardly many people have any infections, “if they do then it’s down to personal hygiene”.

Nowadays 9 out of 10 women are more likely to have tattoos, this may be because women want to be seen as more “courageous and daring by getting tattoos on their necks and hands”, stated Howard. In looking at the aspects of women and tattooing it first began to develop as a critique of politics of the body. Women were getting tattooed due to social struggle. Women’s external appearance has been dictated by femininity and the need to look beautiful and thin, and by allowing women to make a mark on the outer body gives them control of themselves and to rebel against the idea of being feminine and being more like the dominant male.

By Poonam Vadher

29/04/08

The final week for breaking news was rounded up last minute stories and making sure I had a range of stories to submit. So far I have written news stories about burglaries within the patch i was covering i.e. London Road and Sharrow Vale, also restaurant reviews. A feature has to be submitted with the news stories, I decided to write about the history of tattoos since i already had some information on this lead.

The information i had was going back to how tattoos came about to be so popular and the representation of women having tattoos. I found a local tattoo shop in my patch area, here i went to interview a tattooist who would give their opinion on tattoos. I asked him a series of questions for example, how did u get into tattooing? What do you know about the history of tattoos?

The answers i recieved was informative and gave me an insight on how to put an angle to my feature.

The stories i have written about during this course have tested my interviewing skills and my ability to write in different context. Overall i have thoroughly enjoyed this course as i have learnt alot and i also got to see my work being published to a online newspaper company, The Star.

Now that i have started to build up my portfolio this will aid me when finding a job when i graduate from univeristy.

23/04/08

So far i have completed two restaurant reviews, my next review will be on the tapas restaurant Las Iguanas. Writing reviews is fun and challenging as it can be written different context. The way to describe the food can be like painting a picture so the readers can capture the image of that particular dish. At the end of this subject i will have a vareity of stories to add to my portfolio.

My next tip for a story will be based on the bar/restuarant Takapuna as they are holding a Miss South Yorkshire competition. I will interview one of the contestants from Sheffield and ask them a series of questions also will interview one of the main judges of the competition. I believe this will benefit me in my interviewing skills.

15/04/08

Today i have managed to finish of my restaurant reviews both for online and print. This is my second review i have found writing restaurant reviews to be interesting and a good experience as it involved me going to the restaurants to eat the food and also interview the staff about their restaurant.

The best part of restaurant is eating the food as you get to experience different flavours etc so far i have visited Aroma and Wasabi Sabi.

However the disadvantages are that when you write the story for a print version it is about 250 words and then you have the online version which is at least 150 words. I found this to be rather difficult to shorten down as all the information is relevant. Therefore i managed to break it down.

01/04/08

Today i turned a print news stories into a online news stories, i thought this was interesting as online stories are much shorter and more to the point cutting out the least important information.

During the easter holidays i had a telephone interview with the hospitality manager at the forge to find out about the domestic bulglaries and car crimes within the area. I found this to be intriguing and challenging as this was my first attempt to telephone interviewing. however writing down all the information given was very difficult this is where i think shorthand would have come in use. although i did manage to construct a news stories from this plot.

groupwork 4/3/08

Today even though we was a team member down and found it abit difficult to start the newspaper using Quark. As we started to get into it we found the two of us were helping each other to meet the deadline by producing a solid news story.

At first i found it hard to use Quark but as i got use it to i found it easy, even though there are still a few angles i need to grasp. For example how to link text to another textbox.

the overall result was satisfactory even though the paper layout may need to be polished. I made the deadline and found other features to include for next week, i.e vox pop, food reviews and a follow up story on sheffield United football.