Meet Kat. Well, okay, meet Kat’s hands…
This is Kat. She was making a set of custom gloves to honor my wife for her many years of service to living history re-enactments. Kat hadn’t quite finished them before the presentation day, which was fortunate for me in that I got a chance to make a few images that capture her hands in action.
As many of you know by now, I have an on-going personal project of seeing people’s hands doing what they do best. I specifically wanted to side-light this artisan’s hands to highlight the texture not only of her hands, but also in the fabric. I did not have a lot of equipment with me at the time of this shot; just my camera and a little quick thinking. I’ll tell you more about it after the jump.
As you can see by the picture above of the dark hands, the sunlit side goes quite bright, and the shadows quickly go to almost black. I did not have a set of reflectors with me, but there was a white dish-towel sitting on the table next to me. I asked a young lady sitting nearby if she would be kind enough to hold the towel near the shadow side of the hands, and that brought the contrast back to a level I could appreciate. I varied the distance to taste, and the resulting picture is what you see presented here.
Later that same afternoon, Kat presented the finished gloves. My thanks to Kat for allowing me to work with her on this project.
