Hands of Time

By PF Staff in Favorite Photos on Dec 31, 2012

I picked this photo for both personal and artistic reasons. These are the hands of my 92 year old grandmother in January 2011. I had just received my first DSLR for Christmas and this is the first image I took with it that I felt was a "keeper." My grandmother was very worried at the time as my grandfather was in the hospital, and I think/hope my artistic rendering of the original did justice to those emotions.

Click to enlarge

Equipment & Settings Used

Camera: Pentax K-x (hand held)
Lens: Pentax DA 18 - 55 mm
Shutter Speed: 1/25
Aperture: f/ 4.5
Shooting Mode: Av
File Format: RAW
Light Source: Ambient Light - set at +1ev

Post Processing

Aperture 3

Aperture 3 has a built in Auto Enhance setting that I always used when I started to learn post processing skills. From what I understand Aperture evaluates the RAW image and then applies the White Balance, Enhance, Curves, and Highlights & Shadows adjustment settings in a manner that suits the selected photo.

After I used Auto Enhance I made changes and fine-tuned the adjustments to the image based on what I felt it needed and what I wanted to convey.

In this case, shiny areas on the hands with very little detail told me the highlights were too bright so I adjusted the Highlights to remove the "blasted" spots, and I slid the Recovery till I saw detail.

To convey mood and era I converted the image to black and white and then Sepia, adjusting the density to the level that appealed to me.

I cropped the image to the desired composition.

I adjusted the overall Contrast as well as Mid-tone Contrast. I wanted to accentuate the difference and distance between the dark and bright areas till her hands stood out against the background and the crevices, lines and skin detail took on a life of its own.

I sparingly brushed in some Definition to emphasize the curves across the top of her hand and along the fingers.

Even though my post processing skills and photographic equipment have improved since this was taken, it is still one my favourite images.

Before: