Helper

A beautiful shot. One of the best I have seen on PN since some time. It is "simple" composition concentrating on the two items of interest. No travelling of the eyes is needed or invited for. One catches the aesthetics and beauty of the aged human hand and the artifact, the stick handle, as one united subject. Love it !
I will immediately go and visit Mete's portfolio. Congratulations with the POW.

Oh dear. Such a fat target, I won't even say what you know I'm thinking.

Obvious criticisms aside, two questions:

Is the thing to the right of the index finger supposed to be the thumb? If so, how is the "nail" turned that way?

Why is the cane floating in space?

While not quite so enthusiastic, I'm definitely with Anders.
Is it a thumb? Maybe, but not any "nail"
not floating, in shadow.
I, at least, have no idea of what "obvious criticisms" anyone might be making. Nor do I care. The picture works.

"I, at least, have no idea of what "obvious criticisms" anyone might be making"

Oh, sorry. I guess I'll clarify. Here is what the picture "says" to me:

I AM A REALLY, REALLY, REALLY WRINKLED HAND WITH A CANE!!!!

To which I respond: WHY ARE YOU SHOUTING (VISUALLY)???

BECAUSE OLD WRINKLED HANDS WITH CANES ARE DEEP AND PROFOUND.

To which I respond: THEY ARE?

The black velvet 'Elvis' of Draganized old person body parts.
I generally consider pure black backgrounds more of a lack of commitment to the subject than a statement of any kind. Chopping off the cane to add to the blackness seems an unfortunate decision as it leaves the cane without function, unless this is a very short old person.

While I do not think the picture is particularly deep and profound, I find it satisfactory compositionally-speaking. This sounds like damning with faint praise, I realize, but it's not really meant to.

I would like to see the extra appendage removed (because its detracting) and not necessary, and the cane extended down the frame instead of disappearing suddenly. I do connect with the grain in the wood and the weathered hand. With these little changes I think it would be better. I like the concept and the process is nicely done I think.

No need to shout or clarify. I said I DIDN'T CARE and I STILL DON'T.
"Profound" is your criterion.

I can remove profound.

In that case, this is a flyer for the Pickled Man that I would pay 50¢ to see at a carnival side-show -- sitting next to the bearded lady.

Two points: The back of the thumb is shown and therfore no nail, naturally.
As concerns the cutting of the lower part of the walking stick, it is a choice that I approve of because the picture becomes a vignette, and not just a picture of a hand on a walking stick.

When carefully considered, hands can tell many stories. I often find myself considering in detail the hands of my grandparents, my (now elderly) mother, my own scarred and wrinkled appendages, and now the perfect, tiny hands of my granddaughter, and what they say about the lives led or to come. My father-in-law likes to say that no manual task is complete until a blood sacrifice has been made, which truism the scars on my hands prove. Hands have the potential to tell this and many other stories. This vignette plays effectively to the question of storytelling. I find myself asking what life has this person led, and how is that life reflected in this vignette? While I personally might have chosen another variation, I believe this presentation is effective and evocative.

From a technical standpoint, I would like the pose modified to re-position the thumb (to make its relationship to the rest of the hand more obvious) and to show some of the back of the hand. I would prefer to see more of the cane's shaft (though I'm with Anders on the vignetting). I think I might like the DoF to be a little deeper, keeping all elements in sharp focus. Apparently I'm indecisive on this issue, because I also find the image a tad over-sharpened as well. Color me fickle.

David, I'm with when you refer to the stories our hands tel, but I find one of the most interesting aspects of this image is, that it uses all the technics and aesthetics we are acquainted to from still-life paintings and yet the hand is very human and alive.

poor Thing, reduced to hobbling around on a stick. what would Lurch say?

A beautiful image that forces you to look at her. The fifth finger surely belongs to another hand. The cut stick can not perform its function. Who will support this elderly person?

The disembodied hand of an aged Welsh coal miner. A poor pensioner who gets to pick over the tailings to find scraps of coal to heat his shack. Many tales can be divined from a hand. Show me your hand and I can read your life.

A hand means a lot to me because my youngest daughter was born with her left hand. To us hands are essential, your to hands are a gift, one hand here is a wonderful reminder how important a hand is!
Congratulations Mete for the honor of POW. Warm regards.

Just as hands are expressive and symbolic and play an important role in photography and art, so do eyes. There are so many great examples of expressive artistic approaches to eyes and then there's THIS, by the well-known 60s painter Margaret Keane (the subject of a wonderful movie called Big Eyes). This week's Photo of the Week is to hands what Margaret Keane is to eyes. IMO, there's a grotesque caricature-like quality here with a very faux sense of pathos.

Hands are so important and can, indeed, tell stories and convey ideas and emotions. Photos of hands, just because they're photos of hands, don't necessarily accomplish that. This photo, IMO, does not. Unfair comparisons would be THIS gem of Georgia O'Keeffe by Stieglitz and THIS gem of Truman Capote by Avedon. The POTW is cartoonish by comparison.

I say "unfair" comparison for two reasons. The first, obviously, is that I've compared the POTW to two historically highly-acclaimed photographers and none of us have to live up to those kinds of standards. But a little photographic history ought to go a long way in teaching us what's at least possible and how the art of photography has been refined and where it can take us. We may not want to follow traditions of aesthetics but just breaking those traditions doesn't cut it either. If a new aesthetic is going to be found that's at all compelling or emotion-inducing, it can't just be the result of seemingly aimlessly pushing a slider bar to achieve maximum draganization, as has already been mentioned.

The second reason my examples are unfair comparisons is because, as Anders notes, this is more a still life than a portrait. And so the expressiveness of the hand might want to function in a more sculptural and isolated fashion than it would were it part of a portrait. Nevertheless, I'd consider this photo much more a still death than a still life, because all the life has been slidered out of this. I might accept it as a sci-fi rendition of a disembodied hand floating in a black hole in some alternative universe, but I don't find much of a humanistic plot line to grab onto here.

Since this image very well be considered a still life, I find the cane (or walking stick) to be worthy of a serious look than the hand. To me, the hand's predominant dark tones and the ghostly appearance of the finger tips rob the hand of any semblance of belonging to a human being.

Adding one to Fred's linked pictures: a Mapplethorpe.

The problem with this picture is that it is not immediately clear that the object of playing a major role.
This is due to the situation at hand and to compare pictures laken in a studio is like comparing whiskey to wine.
Small is a chanse to balanse the two subiects gave interesting to look at the message.
Despite these reservations, I believe that the picture is successful.

Thanks to Julie. The Mapplethorpe is beautiful (apart from the composition and excellent use of the B&W medium) because he is both predicting and accepting his own death.

Looking again at this weeks image, and the former comments, the hand appears to denote death (already) by its tone and its obscure otherwise expected finger details. Add to that the image of the cane cut off at its second most important point (relating to stability and its attachment to the ground below) further indicates that what we are seeing is effectively an image of end of life. I'm not convinced that the subject and photographer had that particular intention, but that is how it seems to work.

The thing is, any verbal description of this picture is richer than the picture itself. That, to me, is the sign of a failed picture. "Wrinkled hands with cane" gets me almost all of the affectionate, nostalgic posts, above, in spite of, not because of what the picture brings or adds to that verbal description.

Even a very simple, flat picture of hands such as this one [LINK], which is neither composed nor presented in a particularly pleasant way, is still better than, brings added value to, or exceeds it's verbal description, i.e. is a better picture than this POW.

Maybe, as so often is the case, the way each one us sees an image like this weeks POW, tells more about ourselves than of some objective fact about the image. We all project our very being into the image.

Personally, I see no death and doom in this hand and the cane. I see a hand of old age and senescence, settledness, fulfillment. It makes me comfortable and venerative. All good and positive feelings - far from death and doom. Putting that hand on the top of a walking stick, symbol of authority and social prestige, as well as of traveling and moving into the surrounding world, provides tension and interconnections between the two items.

That the photographer has used his skills mimicking a renaissance still-life image, adds to the quality of the scene. Still-life paintings confront "dead items" (nature-morte) of different colors, textures together with different artifacts such as plates, tinware, pottery etc. - and sometimes a skull. Here, in this POW, we see a cane and a very "nature-vivante" human hand.

 

 

This is often said when there's disagreement. It's rarely said when everyone agrees. I don't think our reactions tell more about ourselves than about the photo. And what they tell about the photos has rarely to do with objective facts. I think our reactions give different views of THE PHOTO, they don't state facts or tell such revealing things about each of us.

If I shortchanged criticism by suggesting it was more about the critic than the photo, I'm not sure I ever would have learned how to look at photos in a more mature and sophisticated manner than when I was twelve. Listening to good criticism has helped me learn how to SEE PHOTOS, not so much how to understand the inner workings of critics (though that can sometimes take place to a smaller degree). I think genuine reactions tell about what's potentially there to be seen.

If someone doesn't agree with or doesn't like my reaction, I don't need to hear from them that I'm telling more about me than the photo. That starts to sound just like a rationalization or defense mechanism.

So, for example, while I disagree, Anders does give us a way to look at this image which some may not have considered while reminding us that sill life is referred to in French as nature morte, an important association.

 

 

This doesn't mean that Anders's opinions about the photo are objective facts and it doesn't mean that I've learned a whole lot about Anders. But it does, if I'm open, provide me with a way to look at this photo that I might otherwise not have done. Though I disagree with Anders's assessment of and opinions about the photo, and I have not learned many facts about the photo, and I haven't learned more about Anders than the photo, I have gained in overall perspective and been positively exposed to another way of looking by having listened to him.