A model photographed in pieces: hands, legs, hair, lips. Advertising for watches, jewellery, shoes, polish and creams is most often shot this way.
How to tell whether it is for you
The requirements are narrow and strict, but they apply to one body part only: even skin without scars or pigmentation on the relevant area, neat nails, no marks from elastic or rings, proportionate fingers. Height, age and face do not matter at all — which makes the segment open to people the runway is closed to.
How the work goes
The day is spent in uncomfortable stillness: a hand held up for minutes at a time, repeating one movement on a count. It is painstaking work and often paid above the ordinary day rate, precisely because suitable people are scarce and any flaw is instantly visible in macro.
The condition of that body part is your responsibility, and the requirements never lapse: manicure on schedule, gloves in the cold, turning down anything that leaves cuts.
What to shoot for the book
A separate set of close-ups of whatever you work with: in soft light and in hard, in movement and at rest, with a product and without. If it is hands, frames with different manicures too.
A general book does not help here: a client selects on one body part and looks only at that.
What is worth knowing
Parts models almost never become known — the product is recognised, not the person. In exchange the career lasts longer: hands age more slowly than faces, and the work does not end at twenty-five.
