tuas mãos...

Visually interesting POW, surely.

I find first of all, that the square format works well with the obvious compositional constrains and that the chosen concrete composition of the subject, the hands, is well mastered.

I like very much the play of graduated grey shades that are extremely aesthetic and well done, but I find that the deep black "holes" ruin it for me. When I first had fixed my eye on the black abstract form in the lower right quadrant, I had difficulty of seeing anything else. The dominant blacks, are, in my eyes, noise in the composition and destroy somewhat the aesthetic pleasure of the rest.

I could imagine a picture without the deep blacks and I would have in front of me an almost dancing abstract image of joyful fingers and hands.

It might not be a photo to place on a coffee table, but the coffee table itself.

i looked at the other photos in your profile and saw originality, character, depth. of all your photos this is my least favorite. i dont find the subject matter of interest, the hands dont seem scarey to me but then again it takes a lot to scare me .when i first saw it before it was picked for pow i initially thought.. this is one everyone is going to like but for me its rather silly. SAM

Your photo is the kind of people use to imagine but never makes real. The kind of people who see need just a second to wish to try to be into the scene. Wonderful sensibility

but you have to also understand that the "mind"/vision system will "resolve" detail where none exists.

Examples of this include the "man in the moon", the canals on Mars, and the plethora of saints and deities seen in flatbread, whatever....

As Sagan said once (paraphrase) --

"There was never any doubt about the fact that the canals on Mars reflected the operation of intelligence. The only question was which end of the telescope the intelligence was on."

Pursuant Alex S. cited by MH, I completely agree. I personally look for a meaning in a photograph, it is nice but has no interest ( for me)after the first moment.

That's one big piece of ground glass!!!

If these hands are grabbing me, then the urgent question for me is "Who am I?"
I don't speak Portuguese, but I guess that the title of your photo is "Your hands" so I assume the hands are known, not strange. This photo gives me a more acute sense of myself, not of horror, as suggested in the introduction. I am touched by somebody who knows me very well. So, again, who is touched?
Dear Maria José, I looked at your whole portfolio in photo.net and also at your blog. I think you are a real artist. Congratulations.

The photo does grab my attention, unfortunately it is been done so many times in movies that it is no longer original and has become cliche, causing me to immediately move on.

awesome

My first reaction was to see this as a plea. Then it made me smile because it made me think of tree frogs and the way their fingers attach themselves to surfaces. I'd like to see this device explored further. What other hand patterns might communicate? What other size relationships? I especially like the warm gray tones. Is this a black and yellow/green duotone? I'd like to achieve this color balance with some of my photos. I can see why it was chosen as photo of the week.

This picture has an extreme economy in its aesthetics - something that reminds me of Eisenstein's writings over composition and ideograms. With so few elements, so much is said. Parabens, Maria por tua concepção - David Pennington, Brasil

I think the image interesting but disturbing. A good composition but signifies to me, an environment devoid of life. The hands reaching for the intangible create a sense of hopelessness that predominates. The image speaks with a vital force.

Who knows? Maybe, on the wrong side of the Atlantic, this may be hailed as the photograph of the year. It only reminds of death, as does most of the work of the artist. I am sure Maria José Amorim can do better than that.

"Maybe, on the wrong side of the Atlantic, this may be hailed as the photograph of the year"

Which side of the Atlantic is the "wrong side"? Just asking.

Nicholas, what's wrong with photography that explores death, if that's what you see in it? It's a theme that is relatively seldom addressed, and it is relevant to every living being.

What I found most intriguing about this image, is that it's of 3 hands - not 2, or 4. That started me thinking about who/what the fingers belonged to. A human? A primate? Fun image.

Perception is an interesting thing. I have never been able to see the image in those color fields where you are supposed to relax your eyes and eventually you see an eagle or a whale or some such thing. In this case I just saw two people with their hands on frosted glass even from the thumbnail. In the large size my eyes do seem to shift between seeing only the hand shapes on the glass and then again the two people with their hands up. The most interesting of the hand forms for me is the one in the lower left. It seems less objective than the other two.

I think because I see it so literally, it just didn't hit me all that strong. On the other hand (that fourth one maybe?!?), I do like the way the tones are treated here. There is a bit of what seems to be digital crossover however, with magenta and green banding at the edges of the darker areas and that does distract a bit.

The composition seems a bit out of balance but possibly that was the intent. It might be due to an interest in keeping the white arm on the left in the frame or not crowded, it is hard to tell for sure.

Maria has only a limited number of images available and they vary quite a bit but all seem to be experiments in ways of looking at things. Even though I am not taken with this particular image, what one discovers while experimenting is sometimes the prize, not the specific results. Even working with a structure like this--the frosted glass--that has been used many times before there can be new things discovered when we do it for our own purposes.

Although this image doesn't do much for me I like the experimentation and it would be interesting to see where Maria's work goes in the future.

Simply superb...

Nicholas, what's wrong with photography that explores death, if that's what you see in it? It's a theme that is relatively seldom addressed, and it is relevant to every living being.
Stephen, nothing wrong with photography that explores death. It's the morbidity, and stench of it used as a trick to grab attention.

Nicholas, thanks for the reply. I just don't see morbidity or the stench of death as a trick to grab attention in any of Maria's photos. But in the diversity of human experience, that's not to say that others might not see that.

Nice comments above :)
Eventually, before the rigor mortis that we'll all face - even if we'll not be there - we should read Edgar Allan Poe...

Such a provocative, inspiring photograph! I couldn't help stop thinking about the potential story behind it and it's possible uses.
Thanks for sharing this!

I really like this. Not for the exposure, tonality, originality or any other noun that would lead to a world full of adjectives to describe the composition. It symbolised a sense of death to me. In the space of few days that had seen over 90 children dead in Norway, untimely death of Amy Winehouse and more natural, the death of the modern realist painter Lucian Freud, the three hands to me are each of these and thousands more. I thank the elves for choosing this picture as that of the week. I would otherwise have never seen it.
While we are at it, the exposure is spot on..

or 15 dedos?...:) Is about enfermedad,nicht wahr?:)