24/52 - Painted Hands

We finally got our nursery painted in preparation for our baby boy.  We picked a very masculine baby blue, painted the room and got all of the furniture arranged.  Now, we've just got 3 months left and we can finally put the baby in his own room.  We can't wait and get more excited each day waiting to meet him.

It took me a couple of evenings after work to get the room painted and after my first night of painting, I noticed how much paint I got on my hands.  After seeing the paint on my hands and seeing some of it flake off, this idea came to mind.  I wanted to get a shot with my hands covered in paint and make it look pretty weathered and cracked.

So, after my final night of painting, I took the rollers and ran them over each of my hands a couple of times.  In order for it to look weathered and cracked properly, I kept working while the paint was drying.  So, I grabbed my touch-up brush and went about finishing up a few extra spots around the room.  After about 20 minutes of opening and closing my hands while the paint was drying, it looked a lot like what I was going for.  The fingers had worn away where I was holding the brush and roller and the paint on my palms were really cracked and peeling away.

I went downstairs, got my light set up the way I wanted and fired off a few shots.   The hardest part about it was getting my hands in the right position for the shot.  I put the camera on a 2 second delay and started shooting.  I wanted the shadows to come across my hands at a pretty hard angle to really give texture to the cracking paint, but if I had my hands turned slightly the wrong way, or my fingers bent too much, they would throw shadows across the rest of my hand, so it took a few shots to get it just right.

I really like the way the shot came out.  The paint doesn't look quite as blue as it does in the room, but I still like it.

Let me know what you think.

T.