Tattooing Close Up And in Slow Motion… Incredible Footage

As a tattoo virgin, I only recently learned how tattoo machines actually work, and still didn’t really have a great grasp of how exactly they got the ink under your skin. However, this video from Destin at Smarter Every Day shows the needle itself, or more appropriately the needles themselves, in action in ridiculously slow motion, so you can watch them a poke at a time and see just how the deliver the ink into your skin.

Destin heads to a local tattoo shop in Huntsville, Alabama where he finds Leah and Seejay, two of North Alabama’s most respected tattoo artists. Despite Destin obviously being out of his element as a tattoo newbie and a bit of a geek, Leah and Seejay were more than welcoming, as are most tattoo artists. It’s cool to see how some the stereotypes on both sides of this relationship are shed in this clip.

Destin breaks out the Phantom high speed camera and gets some great up-close footage of the tattoo artists and machines doing what they do during actual art sessions. You can see the needles puncturing into the customer’s skin over and over, each time, leaving in below the surface of the skin to bring the artwork to life.

In true Smarter Every Day fashion, Destin tries out the tattoo machine himself, getting a few quick pokes on the forearm. Of course, there’s no ink on the needles, so it just leaves a small slightly red spot, giving our host a sample of how it feels to get inked without actually leaving ink behind.

At the end of the video, Destin decides to go through with getting a tattoo from Leah, who lays out a cool heart design with Smarter Every Day’s trademark “if we earned it” tagline. Or at least it appears she did. It turns out, the ink wasn’t real, but Destin sold it well and the work, fake or not, looks awesome!