I became aware of an amazing Tattoo Contest by a fellow Steemian name 
So this ugly sun was my first tattoo I got almost 18 years ago. It got it because it was a devilish looking sun and I was the "rebellious" son in my family, so it kind of fit. Without going into too much detail, my family is pretty religious and in Utah at 18, most have a a certain "mission" they are supposed to do, but I decided I was going to join the military and start a family instead.
So my left arm has had a lot of different sessions on it. I am dedicating the whole upper part of my arm to my childhood and the stuff memories I had as a kid. I spent 4 years growing up in Okinawa, Japan and my brothers and I would watch Dragonball Z before it was cool for everyone in America to watch it, this was in 1988. It was all in Japanese and we had no clue what was going on in it, but we liked the fighting and we had some Japanese friends that explained the story to us, so we acted like we knew what was going on. I am a big video game fan and The Legend of Zelda was one of my favorite games growing up, so of course I had to get Link tattooed on myself. I remember playing outside (ya, we did that back in the day) with my friends and we would go on adventures and I would pretend that I was Link and we would go kill monsters. Now to Mikey. I used to watch The Ninja Turtles cartoons all the time and when the old live action movies came out they were so awesome. "Go Ninja Go" by Vanilla Ice is still an amazing song. If you haven't heard it, you are missing out. Mikey was my favorite Ninja Turtle because he was the funnest. He always wanted to party, while Leo was just uptight, Donatello was a nerd, and Raphael was just stupid. Plus he ate the most pizza. The skull tattoo on my elbow signifies my love for music. Without music, I would probably die. I would rather be blind than deaf, and that is a hard thing to say for a photographer and filmmaker that has to be able to see everything.
This is my right thigh. My tattoo artist is a painter and actually painted this before and I thought it was amazing looking and wanted to have it on my body. He even tattooed it on me for free. It was about 10 hours total and we did it in two sessions. The Japanese character means "strength" and I actually tattooed it on myself. It is a lot harder than you would think when you are giving yourself a tattoo. I think the worst part is knowingly inflicting the pain and then not really having a way to deal with it because you have to keep a steady hand while you are sticking needles in yourself about 100 times a second.
This Japanese Daruma Doll is on the back of my right ankle (yes it hurt). The Daruma Doll is a symbol of perseverance and good luck and when you receive one, both of the eyes are white. You are supposed to set a goal when you get one of the dolls, and when you have your goal, you darken one of the eyes. After you achieve the goal, that is when you darken in the other eye. For me, I have one eye darkened in because my goal is to finish my college degree. After being in the military for 10 years and then law enforcement for 6, it was hard for me to go back to school with people that were half my age. Now I am getting closed to finishing my goal and being able to darken the other eye of my Daruma Doll.
This one may be hard to see because there is a lot going on. It is also on my right leg and it is about the size of the Daruma Doll tattoo, but it wraps around my whole ankle. It is a Japanese Demon Parade. It is in reference to a Japanese legend where Yokai, Oni, and other creatures terrorize the living for one night. During that night, you were warned to stay indoors or you would be carried off by the Yokai and never be seen again. The Japanese always had the best horror stories.
Speaking of the Oni, this is on the back of my right arm. I got this from an awesome artist out of San Francisco, California. I told him I wanted an Oni and he drew this right in front of me and about two hours later he was done tattooing it. The Oni is a feared demon in the Japanese culture, but I look at it in a different way. There are different types of Oni, some roam Earth terrorizing the living, ripping their flesh off and crushing their bones, but the other Oni are tasked with being the guardians of Hell. The way I see it, that is one of the most important jobs. They are tasked with keeping the worst of the worst under control and keeping them where they belong. When I was thinking of getting this tattoo, I thought a lot about my past serving in the military and in law enforcement and I could see similarities between the Oni and myself. In the military, I was the Oni for my country, trying to keep the bad away and as a police officer, I was the Oni for the community I served.
I got this Samurai tattoo about 2 years ago from a tattoo artist that flew in from Tokyo, Japan. He had done some work on my brother and about 8 months prior to his arrival here in the US, I was planning this tattoo with him. This is probably my most expensive tattoo that I have, even more expensive than my back piece that you will see later, but it is worth every penny. It is a fully custom piece that we planned out together over the course of a few months. The Samurai is a fierce warrior and a great symbol of strength and I wanted to get this piece to show everything I have overcome in my life and everything that I will be able to overcome. There are many times where I should probably have died, but I am still here.
This is a custom piece of Celtic knot work on my right forearm that my artist and I drew together. I am Scottish and Irish, so the Celtic heritage flows through my veins.
This is the Celtic Trinity Knot. The Celts believed that the most important things in life came in threes, the three domains (earth, sea and sky), three elements, and three stages of life. The script above it is from a poem that I really like called "Footprints in the Sand". It is about when you look back and felt you are alone in the worst times of your life and you looked down and only saw one set of footprints in the sand and thought you were alone, but then you realized that you were carried by your God, friends, or whatever it is you believe in.
This is a Celtic Cross on my right rib cage. Everyone says the ribs is the worst place to get tattooed. It really wasn't that bad. This one only took about 3 and a half hours. Like I said, I am Scottish and Irish. I have to represent. I want to get the rose colored in with yellow because that was the color of the flowers when my wife and I got married, so it would be cool to add some color to this piece.
This piece is on the right side of my chest across from the Trinity Knot. It is the Wallace Family Crest from Scotland. My grandmother was a Wallace and in the Mormon church they are really big into genealogy, and she spent a lot of time and actually traced out family history before the 1200s. One of my goals in the future is to be able to take my wife and kids to Scotland and go and see where my ancestors lived. There are some ruins of a castle that was once in our family and I would love to go and see it.
This tattoo is one of my most meaningful tattoos that I have. I spent 36 months of my time in the military in a combat zone in Iraq. I have been to my share of military funerals and hero's farewells, and they do not get easier at each one you go to. They actually get harder because each time you attend one, a piece of you goes with them. They were your friends, your battle buddies, and now they are no longer there. From now all you can do is remember the good times you had.
This piece is the start of my back piece. Hopefully I will be able to complete it. It may look pretty small in the picture, but the tips of the crown reach from should blade to should blade. I have about 14 hours into this piece so far. I got this to symbolize the hurt that we as a country should feel when we lose our soldiers during war and lose veterans to suicide because of the effects of the wars our country has put them through. The writing on the arms say "Not all scars are visible" representing the invisible scars of PTSD and the other arm says "Gone but not forgotten" and the number "22". The number 22 represents the 22 veterans that commit suicide every day in our country. It has taken me about 2 and a half hours to write up to this point, so unfortunately, while I typing this, two veterans took their own life. My goal with my complete back piece will be to tell my story. I want to eventually have a coffin with a flag draped over it underneath the Statue of Liberty, and a battle scene going on behind her. The whole piece will tell my story of war and lost friends and the struggle of PTSD that I and so many other veterans face on a daily basis.
Thank you for allowing me to share my story and my tattoos with all of you. This post has been a lot longer than I originally anticipated. If you liked my post it would be awesome if you followed me to stay up to date with the cool stuff I post. I am a filmmaker and photographer and write about my travels around the world.
I am excited to announce I am releasing my first feature length film here on Steemit this Saturday, March 10th, by 12pm EST. It is about a Vietnam Veteran and his experiences during the war and how it affected his life afterwards. He has an incredible story, and you won't want to miss it. I released the trailer for it and it can be found here. Thank you for visiting and I look forward to hearing from you.