Food For Digital Thought: Using Gesture In Your Photography

by Joe on October 20, 2020

Gesture

The psychological use of Gesture in Photography can take our imagery what I often refer to as “Up a notch”.

A gesture is a human nonverbal movement by the hand, the face or head, or the feet to express an idea. It’s an action that conveys a person’s feelings or a deliberate act to get across a point. This point can be full of emotional implications.

Capturing this in your photography can be a powerful tool while showing a person’s personality in the process. A gesture may only comprise a very small part of your composition, but its effect can contribute more than half of the overall photograph. This is an important area we work on in my online class with the BPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshop I conduct around the planet.

The way a person smiles, holds their head, or hands, or even the way he or she crosses their legs can be a declaration of their persona. Having a man slump says something different than having him stand straight. Placing a person in the middle of the frame says something entirely different than placing him/her close to the edge of the frame. Gesture is a language unto itself, and can often be translated universally. Gesture is also a great way to tell a story without the words.

The most important thing to remember is that a gesture is a fleeting single motion and being able to freeze it in time is critical. If you want your photo to be authentic, it takes practice to capture the gesture at the peak of its action.

I use gesture all the time, but I don’t always wait for it. I like to create a scenario and stage the gesture then make it look like I caught it and then shot it more in a reportage reporting style. By the way, be sure to watch for my upcoming post on non-human gestures.

Here’s a few examples of actually capturing the gesture the moment it happened, and creating it to make it look real. Can you tell which is which?