The photographs that are worth looking at are the ones taken months later, in daylight, with nothing done to them.
Most tattoo portfolios are shot at the end of the session, under a ring light, with the contrast pushed. That photo tells you what the artist can do for one afternoon. It tells you nothing about whether the piece will still be a face in five years.
Federico posts his work healed and unfiltered, and has done it for years: more than eighty of the pieces on his Instagram, where over 50,000 people follow the work, are healed shots taken in daylight. If you are about to spend serious money on a large piece, those are the photographs to judge him on.
The photo is taken in daylight, with no app, no contrast pushed, no black added afterwards. What you see is what the skin looks like.
Fresh ink sits on a swollen, wet surface and every line looks sharper than it is. After a few weeks the skin settles and the grey drops back. A portrait that still reads after that was built correctly.
All tattoos soften. Black and grey built in layers of grey wash keeps its contrast longer than one built by pushing solid black, because there is a real range of tone to lose before the image flattens.
Give it a full month before you look at it critically, and three before you photograph it. Anything you judge in the first week you are judging on swelling.
Requests go straight to Federico, not to an agency inbox. He answers from his own address.