Bali Blessings shows the hands of a Balinese priest blessing a new 'bemo' - a jeep used for public transport.

The Balinese are highly spiritual and they would hold a religious ceremony to bless every major item before it is used.

I feel blessed to have captured this image, during my first trip to Bali in the early 1980s.

It was my ex-wife who first drew my attention to the expressiveness of hands. This was my first photograph of hands and it remains one of my favourites even today.

This image, however, has also been my most problematic. The lighting was poor as it was shot in the evening. Plus, the slide was so badly worn out that earlier scans all had an extremely strong dark blue cast.

It was so bad that I wrote an entire article about my troubles with this image on my website, http://www.art-photograph-gallery.com/photograph-of-hands-1.html

For a long time, I had to live with a black and white version of this, which actually looks quite nice.

It was only last month, when my friend Larry helped me restore my precious slides, that I finally obtained this rather nice color version.

I couldn't believe my eyes when Larry emailed this image to me.

Compare it with Bali Blessings (before) and you will know why this image inspired me to write a sharing about restoring my precious slides.