RETURN TO THE HOME PAGE "HANDS" PHOTO ASSIGNMENT "Fisherman" from "A Show of Hands" by Tim Booth
"HANDS" This assignment sets out to explore a different kind of portraiture, "HANDS."
Why hands? Typically, portraits focus on faces. But faces trigger an immediate psychological response from the viewer. We are hard-wired to lock into the eyes, nose and mouth of a face, and are sub-consciously attracted or repelled by what we see. Clouded by pre-conceptions, the face almost becomes a barrier to seeing the person -especially if their face is recognizable. Focusing only on the hands puts all the subjects on even ground, and forces the viewer to look beyond the expected, and see a more approachable humanity revealed in the subject’s hands.
Hands are one of the most interesting and expressive parts of the human body. Our hands reveal a lot about us: whether we live a hard or soft life, whether we "work with our hands"
for our jobs (or don’t), maybe even something about the type of work we do. Hands can also be great expressive elements, revealing excitement, calm, anger, even serenity or in the case of infants, innocence. STEP 1: Read 26 Expressive Images of Hands STEP 2: Watch "A Show of Hands" video, by Tim Booth (below). STEP 3: Shoot the Assignment: Your assignment is to shoot photographs with hands (or a single hand) as the central element. The only requirement is that the hands tell us something about the person that the hands belong to.
TIPS FOR THIS ASSIGNMENT: •Use beautiful light & composition for your hands portraits.
•Get close, fill the frame with the subject's hands -but make sure you're not so close that your camera can't focus.
•Stay steady.
•Use your imagination when creating your photos -Composition!
•Experiment with camera angles until the image shows the hands in an interesting "pose."
•Keep it simple -make sure there is nothing in the background that ruins your compositon.
FINAL PRODUCT:
SUBMIT TWO AMAZING "Hands Portraits" & 20-image proofsheet in Google Classroom. •Pick your two best "Hands" photographs.
•Use Photoshop to crop your images.
•Try converting your photos to black and white, or if you choose color,
adjust the tones and color balance using Photoshop "Curves" or "Levels".
•Submit your two cropped and adjusted images in the Google Classroom folder.
•A 20-image proofsheet is required HAVE SOME FUN WITH THIS! "A SHOW OF HANDS" by Tim Booth
