LeahStewart

Helpless Hand

Jul, 2014

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Behind The Lens

Location

This photo was taken at the house of my subject. It is part of a series I created for my school photography assignment in my final year. The series was based around the dark areas of a person's mind and represents the internal of a person in the external creation of a photographic series.

Time

This was taken in the afternoon of a summer day in Auckland, New Zealand.

Lighting

Some of the other photographs from the series used high contrast lighting set-ups, but for this one I relied on the ambient light in the bathroom. The white walls and tiles reflected the light beautifully through the glass onto my subject's hand pressed against the shower glass.

Equipment

When you're a young photography student with minimal equipment, you use everything around you and become quite creative and innovative with creating images. I definitely did this a lot in creating this series. I owned a Canon 550D at the time, and for this shot it was handheld.

Inspiration

I wanted this photo to represent a person trying to reach out to receive help, but being unable to do so. The clear glass represents the way that the person thought they were in reach, but were blocked by that same piece of glass that it impossible to reach through.

Editing

The photo was shot in colour and turned into black and white in Photoshop CS6. I also boosted the contrast slightly and darkened the shadows to lose detail from the subject's face - to put more emphasis on the hand.

In my camera bag

When shooting this series, I had a Canon 550D with the standard twin lens kit.

Feedback

My advice would be not to worry about what gear you do or don't have. Creativity comes from what you make of the tools you do have around you, and how you can compose an image in a way that it interesting and different from others you have seen before. The less gear you have when you are still learning, the more focus you automatically put into being creative in other ways. I have more gear now that I am more experienced, but I have a huge appreciation for the years when I was starting out with minimal gear, as it was the building blocks of my creative process.

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LeahStewart

LeahStewart

Helpless Hand

Behind The Lens

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