As I was planning my trip Down Under, I would be lying if I tried to say I wasn’t thinking about what tattoo I could get. The answer was almost immediately available. I knew a big reason I was visiting Australia was to see the Great Barrier Reef. I knew my tattoo needed to represent my visit of the Natural Wonder. This generated two difficult questions: Which parlor would I use and what image represents the reef? In my head, I imagined Cairns as some small hiker village with minimal amenities and such. Turns out I was very wrong. It is a thriving tourist hub, full of hostels, bars and tattoo shops (just what every millennial who is avoiding responsibility needs, right?) So now the problem was actually narrowing it down to WHICH tattoo parlor I wanted to pick. I started checking the interwebs, and ended up picking Cairns, Ink.Ur. Bod. Their primary artist was going to be out, but I really liked the work that Conan was doing.

Now for the image. Well… I knew I wanted to work my shark from Maui into the work since, Reef + Shark… that works. I also didn’t want something that muddied both images, just to get it on me. Conan worked with me on the design.

The reef is a magical place full of life and diversity. I wanted to make sure he captured that. He selected several different types of coral and visuals.

This one was painful: you can see that some of the ink goes into the armpit. Yep… that is an area that I want to avoid in the future. Conan did an awesome job of integrating the shark into the coral design. I am very happy with this piece.

Thank Conan