Images of praying hands, or hands praying, make up the first and biggest section in this gallery of photogrphs of hands, which I title HANDS IN PRAYER.

This section has 27 images spread over 22 pages - including the Introduction pages, which feature this image taken at the Buddhist Festival of Vesak in the 1980s:

Yet praying hands would have been an even bigger section. In my first attempt to create this book, I reached up to page 35 and was still only midway through on the subject of hands praying.

I have that many photographs of prayer hands and hands praying! Most were taken in Singapore but I have been fortunate to also capture hands in prayer in Bali - my praying hands image, Bali Blessings being one of my all time favourites!

More recently, I again had the chance to travel and was happy to obtain some images of praying hands at the Sensoji temple in Tokyo, Japan.

This emphasis on prayer reflects my interest in - and inclination towards - what I call "Spiritual Photography", that captures people in their most intimate moments with God, the Universe and their inner selves.

Most images were taken at Vesak and the Hindu festival of Thaipusam, simply because these two are public events that are easily accessible, and they attract many photographers.

In fact, even some of the images in the Just Hands section were captured at Vesak and Thaipusam as well. But I put them there as they do not specifically show the hands in prayer.

Right now, I do not have any images of Christian hands, or similar images from other faiths. This is not due to any deliberate bias, just that there are fewer opportunities for capturing such images.

I do intend, however, to broaden my repertoire of photographs of praying hands.

Meanwhile, what had happened instead was that I took more photographs that show hands in other situations. This is because, ever since I bought my digital SLR in November 2007, I had been taking a lot more photographs, in fact, much more than I did in the past 30 years.

So I really had to edit down this section of this book. But the end result, I feel, is a much better, more balanced book. This book now has a wider variety of photographs of hands and, without an over-emphasis on praying prayer, the tone of the book is also lighter and less serious.