Hands On

Detail is one path toward reducing, refining and distilling the essence of a subject

As mentioned previously in this article, detail in photography is a multipurpose tool. One valuable purpose is that in some – actually many – subjects, you can find the concentration of what is going on at this smaller scale. Here, the subject is the most traditional of Chinese musical instruments, the guqin – a seven-stringed instrument that was invented centuries ago. They’re as important musically to the Chinese as the violin or piano is to us. So, without sound, how to get a strong image out of this?

I’ve photographed them a few times before, as the smaller pictures (right) show, and while the full scale gets the information across, including the facial expression of a musician’s concentration, the most expressive part by far is the hand.