Pictures of musicians hands, as well as the hands of actors, dancers, acrobats and other artistes and performers make up a section of the book which I call A SHOW OF HANDS.

This is the newest section of this book, with all photographs of hands taken after July 2008. All in, this section has 22 images spread over 20 pages. Plus, a hands image showing the hands of acrobats is used on the back cover.

This is also the fastest growing collection of hands images in my personal collection - because since August, I have been attending free concerts and performances at The Esplanade, Singapore's premier performing arts centre, almost every weekend and now, on weekdays too.

One of my earlier images from The Esplanade, showing the hands of Indonesian dance maestro Tom Ibnur, is this one, taken during Pesta Raya, a festival of Malay music and dancers, in September 2008. It is one of my absolute favourites:

It is a great challenge to take pictures of musicians hands as well as the hands of other artistes - because they (at least the more interesting ones) tend to move about quickly. And also because the stage lighting is often chaotic, randoming changing colours from red to blue to orange... So a lot of luck is involved.

Imagine the amount of luck that I needed to capture this "air guitarist", not just with his hands perfectly in place, but in that fleeting moment when he stuck his tongue out.

Besides luck, what's also needed is very fast reaction and the instinct that comes with years of experience. Quite often, things happen too quickly for me to think. I just snap. Yet fortunately, the final image comes out fine, sometimes well-composed even.

Another major challenge in taking pictures of musicians and other artistes, whether or their hands or faces, is that they tend to be quite a distance away on stage. Because I like to zoom in close to capture the details of their expressions - or, for that matter, the expressions of their hands - I find my 75-300 mm zoom lens barely adequate.

Fortunately, The Esplanade has a cosier setting at The Concourse, an indoor performance venue where the audience can get up pretty close.

Not all the images in this section were taken at The Esplanade. Other venues / events included the Singapore Night Festival at the Singapore National Museum and Singapore Management University, and even a broadcasting industry trade show. which had performers for visitors to look through television cameras - but I prefer to look through my own Fuji S5 Pro dslr.

Click here for more pictures of musicians, dancers and others, which I posted at JPG Magazine. Look for the my photo essays on Photographs of Hands, Pulling Strings, the Didgeridoo artiste, Dancers from Sumatra, The Man who Dances with Plates... Lots of good stuffs there.