'Four Hands'

It is said 'watch the hands because they'll tell you more than faces --

people know how to falsify looks with their faces, but their hands

routinely give themselves away'. (Elliott Erwitt loosely paraphrased)

From time to time, I take a photo about 'hands' -- as here in a public

square in Ukraine not long ago. Your ratings and critiques are invited

and most welcome; if you rate harshly or very critically, please submit a

helpful and constructive comment; please share your superior

photographic knowledge to help improve my photography. Thanks!

Enjoy! John

Interesting story about the hands!

PDE

Thank you so much.

It's what I view as a 'little' photo -- never intended to be pretentious -- just to capture a moment.

John (Crosley)

I didn't much think about it at the time I was taking this, though I should have been.

I consciously was 'lining up hands' between the young man and the older man so they'd complement each other or at least 'reflect' each other and somehow be a reflection on their different lives, but I was too involved in taking the photo and a variety of other shots that were not good at all. This was the only good one one of the bunch because it has a 'pattern' or 'composition' to it, which is something I desire highly in 'street' photography.

So, though I should have been, and my subject should have dictated that I do so, I was NOT reflecting on the differing life situations between these two men --- how in youth the younger man is allowed the luxury of putting his hands on the backside of surely a very attractive young woman, and even a little low at that, while the older man is consigned to sitting at the base of a statue, alone with his mobile (cell) phone for companionship -- maybe he's talking to his wife, on whose rear end he once put his own hands?

And the young man has firm flesh on which to place his outstretched hand; the older man just outstretches his hand and that's that -- he's grasping nothing.

Such is life.

I didn't realize I was such a story-teller, especially in this photo, but people seem to be telling me so, as you have.

I had hardly thought of this photo as an allegory; I was so intent on the achieving the patterns and composition with hands, but I an becoming aware of its allegorical importance now.

Thanks (once again) for enlightening me.

That's twice in one day!.

John (Crosley)

Excellent composition again.

The focus ( intelectual and artistical not the technical one ) on the hands is brilliant and as you say, hands will lie much less than faces.

But feet are also "speaking" and here we have all the men feet strongly rooted on the ground, when the young woman is disconecting from hearth, getting ready to fly : Probably an effect of the man's hands on her body.

Also the young man in grey shades is framed by a black dressed woman and the ( mostly ) black dressed older man. Black dressed poeple who by a way of forcing the framing are the only one having a bag.

And, as Meir actually noticed, the background is very very strongly re-inforcing the whole sexual tension of this story, as, in the way you framed it, the sculpture really looks like a female's sexual organ