Talia Scher, a 28-year-old CSUN graduate student working towards receiving her credential and masters in art education, showcases her passion for photography with a large black and gray tattoo on her left arm.

Scher said she fell in love with photography in college.

“The camera’s lens is like an eye, the way it functions, so I put the camera lens in an eye and then the eye inside of a sunflower,” Scher said. “This here, coming from the flower, is the cord of a 4×5 camera I used while in my undergraduate. And these lines of light are based on old illustrations of how the camera works.”

Scher got her large tattoo done when she lived on the east coast, back in her early twenties.

“This was actually done in my living room by a friend of my ex-boyfriend,” Scher said. “He would come to visit us and do all our tattoos.”

Scher has a total of eight tattoos on various areas of her body — including one that she no longer is fond of.

Located on Scher’s lower back is a set of handprints, which she got as her first tattoo.

“Everyone thinks that I have a child and that they are my child’s handprints or something, but I got them when I was making a lot of artwork,” Scher said. “It represented that part of my life, but because everyone asks me ‘is that your child’s handprints,’ I’m just sick of it and want to cover it up.”

Although this tattoo brings Scher a lot of unwanted attention, she said that getting it removed or altered is the least of her priorities as she focuses on school and her career.