Starting with the Left Hand, Part 1
There are instructional books a’plenty that can start you out with reading music and learning songs or flashy licks. There are few or none, I feel, that given sufficient attention to the proper use of your hands and body. Posture is important. The guitar is a physically demanding instrument with a substantial learning curve for your body. Learning with improper posture and technique can limit your abilities, or worse cause injury.
I will write several articles with a focus on posture, hand position, and proper technique. The first of these will start out with the part of the body that most beginners struggle with; the left hand.
The first thing to keep in mind before we even touch the guitar is that your left hand must be as relaxed as possible while playing and holding the guitar. If you take nothing else away from this, remember that your hand must be held with as little tension as possible. Shake your hands out, stretch them, run warm water over them; whatever you need to keep your hands relaxed. Now, you will notice that the guitar does take some strength to play, especially certain chords. It requires your hands to move in ways that they otherwise would not. All of this results in a great deal of tension. You have to stay aware of that tension and take all steps to minimize it.
I find that its helpful to examine proper left hand position away from the guitar. In this way you get a sense of what your hand should look and feel like once on the guitar, without having to actually play the instrument. Your hand should roughly take the shape of the letter “C.” Try this before actually touching the instrument. Make sure that your fingers have a bit of space between them. They don’t want to be touching each other, but they don’t want to spread unnaturally far apart either. Your thumb should be approximately across from your middle finger. 
Now, with your hand in the proper position grab the guitar neck making sure to keep your thumb pointing up towards the ceiling. This is the proper hand positioning for nearly every technique. As such, you should make sure to get comfortable with it. In the picture below with the acoustic guitar my wrist is actually a little too bent. Also, the guitar is pitched back a bit too far. It should be more perpendicular to the floor. You can’t tell from the photo but I was looking over my shoulder and barking instructions to my wife/photographer.
Don’t point your thumb towards the headstock as this will limit your mobility; particularly your ability to stretch your fingers.
Take care not to wrap your thumb around the neck. This is one of the most common mistakes.
There are several simple chords which will be easy enough to play with your thumb over the neck, but several more advanced chords, including the all important barre chords will be impossible in this position. One caveat however is that bending heavy strings (particularly if you are playing close to the nut) can be difficult unless you do wrap your thumb over the neck. 
So, while nothing is ever etched in stone, you should try to avoid this hand position for all situations except those that require it.
Study these pictures and try to match the posture and positioning that is presented here. Be sure that you can maintain these positions with little to no stress in your hand. In Part II we will take a closer look at the fingers and how they should make contact with the fretboard.
Filed under: Guitar, Music Technique and Education
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You should re-shoot the first picture of your left hand on the neck. It is, indeed, bent too far over for typical technique. More important than that, perhaps, would be an explanation of the physiological reasons. The wrist has one of the densest areas of blood vessels, nerves, muscles and tendons, all of which are used to control our fingers. Bending your wrist over causes more stress on all these body parts. Attempting to manipulate your fingers in such a position is painful over a short stretch of time. The pain is often not felt as sharp pain, but rather an inability to fret strings with adequate pressure… causing the player to push HARDER to accomplish the required pressure which increases the stress and pain. A spiraling loop of increased pain that ends with either an exhausted player (after relatively little playing time) or worse, actual damage to those anatomical parts in your wrist.
It should also be mentioned that many a guitar student has given up the instrument because of the pain involved in learning, much of which is self inflicted and wholly unnecessary.
Good stuff! Its true that beginners waste an awful lot of sweat and tears by fighting with themselves and the instrument. Learning the proper posture and the proper touch on the strings not only makes you a better player but also decreases your chance of injury. I always ask my students who have poor posture, “Do you want to be able to play, or do you want to look cool?” Its a hard choice for some of them!
Thanks for the comment.