Photographing Hands

Hands hiding from a portrait can become the portrait

I hope to get back to more frequent posts soon, but this is the busiest season for photography (the kind I actually get paid to do). Just a thought or two about hands and portraiture...

Remember that great photo of hands making bread in my interview with Brad Slade? No? Well here it is:
It shows how much meaning is conveyed in a person's hands. Brad's photo also teaches a good lesson about how to do a portrait of hands: show them in action. Capture the mechanic at work. Capture the child finger painting. Show hands turning the pages of a book. Hands holding a favorite possession. You get the picture.

The photo at the top shows a kind of playful shyness as the smile peeks out through the hands. My son's hands also suggest that he can be both playful and stressed (a nail biter like his Dad).

Try doing a portrait that focuses on the hands of someone you love. And when you do, share your results.

Inspiration for using the foreground

1. Two ice creams and an ice tea, 2. Friday, 3. 112.365 - Screened, 4. Day 297 / 365 - Cunning Plan!, 5. Looking Through the Window at My Baby, 6. il mio punto di vista, 7. Looking through other people's windows..., 8. YAB, 9. foreground

Don't have an idea for the monthly special? Here is a selection of photos from Flickr that do interesting things with the foreground.

1. Food, such as in the photo of a boy eating two ice creams, has many possibilities: The "it's good for you" food sitting in front of a defiant child, food tempting a person, remnants of a dinner party with someone cleaning in the background...

2. Deep focus allows relationships between the foreground and background to come through.

3. Any kind of screen creates intrigue. Windows, fabric, a tennis racquet, anything that creates texture or partially obscures the subject.

4. Sometimes I think that the writing on the hand thing has been overdone, but maybe that's just because I look at a lot of photos. In any case, I really like this one. Hands, in general are one of the most expressive parts of the body (think about Rodin, for example).

5. Something with severe geometry placed in the foreground can dissect the composition of a photo in interesting ways.

6. In this photo, writing as foreground to a landscape evokes the relationship between text and image. The idea that looking at the landscape may have inspired a poem reminds me of Horace's link between poetry and painting.

7. "Looking through other people's windows" may sound like a voyeuristic title, but here the person is looking out. Click to see the larger version in which a bottle of cleanser gives the perfect touch of reality. What is the view from your window and what objects inside become a part of that view?

8. Why are people compelled to write on fogged up windows? We have all done it. Try photographing your ephemeral creation. Try to go beyond smiley faces and hearts.

9. Foreground any object while maintaining focus in the background and strange things can happen.