Reaching Out

“Why do you keep taking pictures of your hands? I don’t get it!”

If there is one thing my photography is known for, it is the frequency at which my outstretched hand or arm appears in my images. I would take these so often in high school that my friends would call it “The Beebe Reach.” This “genre,” for lack of a better term, of my images can be traced back to 2015.

The hand on a yellow wall is an image I took back in 2016. I believe it was taken with my iPhone and edited with VSCO, which was the hot new aesthetic editing app at the time. To this day, I do not understand how to work it. I love minimalism, but VSCO takes it to the next level. I also still really like this image. It could use a touch up, but I mainly just love the colors here. This is one of the first images of my hand that I really fell in love with.

Of course, no one really understood it, nor did they really think it was that aesthetically pleasing either. Nonetheless, I kept on taking these pictures.

Where did this whole thing come from? What is the origin of The Beebe Reach?

This was not the product of my own imagination. 15-year old Michael was heavily influenced and inspired by one of his favorite YouTubers, Connor Franta, and his photography. (To this day, I still look to Connor for inspiration in various aspects of my life.) He would add his outstretched arm to images as a symbol. If I remember correctly, he mentioned that his arm represented him wanting to hold onto that moment.

15-year old me, wanting to live in such aesthetically pleasing moments, and began to try and recreate them. What I did not have at the time was a clue in the world on how to do it, let alone do it right.

Over time, I have started to understand what makes one of these hand pictures good or not.

What do these images mean to you?

To put it simply: nothing.

I think Connor’s meaning does resonate with these images, at least to an extent. I feel like I have stronger connections to those moments than I do with many of the other images I take; however, that could just be placebo or something.

Truthfully, they do not have much of an intentional meaning. If someone can get a meaningful message out of the image, then by all means that is it. Art is up to interpretation, so whatever you feel when you see it is good enough for me!

At the end of the day, I just think that my hand makes for a very aesthetically pleasing model. The colors of my hand can compliment scenes quite well. The different bones, ligaments (those are in there, right? I never took anatomy, I don’t know), and veins create really interesting shadows and highlights that create very interesting shapes. The way that the fingers move and curl create lovely shapes and, and even movement.

There can be so much character and emotion in just one hand.

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