Gesture

When I was younger, I had boundless energy. I could walk for hours with a bag loaded with cameras, lenses, and film. I was a perpetual motion machine with a camera. How time has changed all that.

Nowadays, I need periodic breaks when I am out shooting. On this particular day, I was headed for a local Starbucks that is frequented by many other street photographers. As I waited at a crosswalk, a man walked up to me. Peaking out of his partially zipped jacket was the head of a small dog. I knew I had to make a picture.

I complimented the man on his dog and asked him if I could make a picture of it. He agreed, and I positioned myself in front of him. I knew I wanted to do more than just take a picture of his dog. My intent was to include the man in the composition because it was the intimate connection between him and his dog that interested me.

As I was figuring out my composition, he asked me if I minded him lighting up a cigarette.

“Please do,” I said, amazed at my luck, because it was the moment that he lit his cigarette, took a drag, and whipped the match through the air that provided the gesture that made the photograph. What would have been just another cute shot of a man with his dog became something more as a result of the gesture of the man’s hands, the tilt of his head, and the expression of the dog. It was the flourish that completely transformed the photograph into something special.

What is Gesture?

When you think of gesture, the first thing you likely imagine is a person moving their hands as they try to explain or emphasize something. Human beings use their hands all the time to express emotions such as joy, anger, and sadness. There are moments when gesture expresses a feeling better than words can. This is one of the reasons gestures can be so important in a photograph, a medium that does not have the benefit of sound.

However, gesture is more than just a person gesticulating. It can also be the slight tilt of a head, the hunching of shoulders, or a facial expression. Gesture is often that little something that elevates the ordinary to the extraordinary. And the amazing thing about gesture is that it is often the smallest of details that completely transforms a shot.

Though a gesture is often associated with human physicality, it can also be a ragged piece of yellow cloth clinging to a chain-link fence or the peeling paint of a wall that reveals an old poster underneath. It is a detail that, whether human or not, makes an image more than just the sum of its parts.

In this photograph I made while listening to a presentation at the Miami Street Photography Festival, the gesture was the sunglasses sitting atop the man’s head. Though his silhouetted bald head makes for an interesting visual draw, it is the sunglasses and the color they produced that makes the shot especially interesting. It is a small thing, but a small thing that carries weight, which is something to always look for in a gesture.

The search for gesture is often the last thing I consider for a shot. The evaluation of light and shadow, line and shape, and color serve as the building blocks for each composition. It is the consideration of each of those elements that allows me to decide what to include or exclude from the frame, thus refining the composition. Once these decisions are made, the gesture is the one element that I cannot completely predict, but which precise seeing and patience often reveals.

This is why having a systematic way of seeing becomes so invaluable. If you don’t, you are often too preoccupied with the camera and its settings, or relying far too much on fast reflexes, to respond to an unfurling moment. By processing the scene visually in the way that I have described, you can focus your full attention on that one telling flourish that completely elevates an image.

Anticipating Gesture

For this image of skateboarders in France, I saw the potential of the scene to make a remarkable shot. I knew I wanted to do more than capture a single skater performing a trick. I wanted to capture the fluidity and the energy of the entire scene and the multiple skaters.

As I evaluated the action, I determined where the skaters who were catching air launched and landed. To emphasize their flight, I positioned myself low to the ground. From there, I considered the lines and shapes of the scene, including the block of concrete, the pole, and the other skaters that moved through the area. The abundance of light ensured that I could achieve both a fast shutter speed to freeze the action and a small aperture to increase the depth of field. The expanse of blue sky would play an important part in the shot because of the low angle from which I was shooting. I also noted that the clothing of the skaters might play an important role in the photograph.

Once I figured out my overall composition, it became a numbers game. By that, I mean creating a series of images of a skater juxtaposed against the expansive blue sky that also considered the other skaters in the background. I paid attention to both when the individual skater launched into the air and where the other kids were positioned in the background and at the edges of the frame.

This final image provided me more than I could have hoped for. I captured a wonderful gesture produced by the skater in the background, and the body language of the girl on the left provided a fantastic counterpoint to him. The angles produced by the skater are mirrored beautifully in the girl’s body. But that is not the only gesture in the photograph. There is also the gesture of the red hat against the blue sky to the right of the light pole. And finally, there is the arm and hand at the far-right edge of the frame. It is a little detail that other photographers would avoid, but that for me adds an important and balancing gesture that helps complete the image.

An image like this would not have been possible had I been focused only on capturing the action of a single skater. That might have been an interesting shot, but it would not have been much different from the tens of thousands of images made of skateboarders every day. This shot takes it to another level as a result of slowly building the composition and then waiting for the final, telling flourishes. This image relies on the power of gesture.

Humanity in a Gesture

I am increasingly aware of the importance of capturing something genuine in a photograph. As much as I love to create aesthetically pleasing photographs that are well lit and composed, I am always trying to challenge myself to produce photographs that reveal what it means to be human.

Having critiqued numerous photographs in competitions and portfolios, I am aware of the fact that whether images are sloppily or well composed, they can sometimes leave me feeling a bit hollow. It is not so much how the image was captured or with what camera, but what the photographer was responding to.

When I photograph people interacting with each other, an animal, or even an inanimate object, I look for something that reveals some aspect of that person’s experience in that particular moment. This is a lot harder to do than one might think.

I find that when I have considered all the other visual elements of light and shadow, line and shape, and color, I can keep my full attention on identifying a gesture that not only provides visual flourish, but also gives the image a sense of humanity.

I see humanity in the photograph of a father and daughter embracing on the day of his wedding (previous page). The way they hold each other expresses the love and affection that they felt for each other in that moment. As a counterpoint, there is another gesture that exists in the background with the makeup artist applying makeup on the bride. In addition to helping tell the story of the moment, the contrasting gestures, in their own way, demonstrate the relationship between people.

Special events like weddings, birthdays, and reunions can provide rich opportunity for such gesture, but these gestures actually happen all the time. Think of a mother brushing her child’s hair, a dog licking its owner’s face, a woman trying to avoid stepping into a puddle, or a man blowing on a hot cup of tea. Each of these ordinary, everyday moments are gestures that, through the eyes of the observant photographer, can be pure gold.