HAND MADE features mannequin hands, hands of statues and other "hand made" hands.

This is possibly the most unusual section in this gallery of photogrphs of hands. If photographs, especially artistic photographs of human hands are uncommon, photographs of the hands of statues and of mannequin hands are even rarer.

In all, this section has 12 images spread over 10 pages. These were taken at temples (inside and outside), museums, shopping districts and a friend's home - in Japan, China and Singapore.

I find them fascinating and I hope you will enjoy this section.

Mennequin hands, especially those at high-end fashion stores, tend to be very beautiful and almost perfect in construction and design. Or, as in the case of this pair of green hands, they come in strange colours! How wonderful.

The style of photography here is what author / photographer Richard Seah calls “candid still life".

Unlike traditional still life photography, where the subject is arranged (usually on a table) in a studio with special studio lighting, candid still life images are photographed "as is".

Traditional still life photography depends largely on the photographer's skill and artistry in arrangement and lighting set-up. The photographer has almost complete control. The subject can be photographed from practically any angle, with any background and in any lighting.

Candid still life photography, on the other hand, comes with lots of limitations.

This image of a green mannequin hands was taken off a shop window, at night, along a popular shopping alley in Beijing, China. Thus, only the front view was available - which was fine in this instance. Lighting options were also restricted. I had wanted to return the next morning to shoot again, but my schedule did not permit me to do so.

Click here to view another sexy green (not) mannequin hands.

In the case of this image, showing the hand of a statue outside the Buddha Tooth Relic temple in Singapore's Chinatown, I did go back to shoot several times, in the hope that I would meet more favourable lighting conditions.

Once, I even woke up early in order to reach the temple at sunrise - but the sky was overcast and there wasn't much of a sunrise to get excited about. The lighting was dull. Should I return again at sunset?

After a point, I had to decide that I had tried hard enough, and just make do with the situation. For this hand made image, I used Adobe Photoshop to desaturate the colours, leaving just a hint of green to give the statue - and its hand - a metallic bronze feel.