Laura Morton’s delightful moments of Cuban teenagers being teenagers, just like teens all over the world, have a universal appeal, because of openness, spontaneity, and the youthful vitality. (Figure 1)

It would be a much different connotation if all four teens were stone faced, sitting like uniform school children on the seawall. But the clutching of the arms, the swaying of the bodies, and genuine laughter, heard only with the ears of times gone by, communicate to the viewer more than simple identification of what these teens look like. It provides detail to who they are in the context of a youthful moment.

These are images that translate to us the tempo of everyday life on an emotional level. It’s a quality of communication that is articulated in the vernacular of observation.

Body language is subtle communication. The girls are interested in the boy hanging around. The boy is interested in the girls…but the girls ignore him. Both (Figures 2 and 3) have the same visual elements. But each image emphasizes something totally different about the subjects and how they relate to each other.

But now the nit picking. I would prefer to have the arms and hands inside the frame or cropped correctly. Naturally, Morton had other frames where the teens extremities where in the fame, (more than a 150 other frames), but all the elements of body language came together in Figure 1.

Figure 2                                                    Figure 3                           

Her other frames, of the moment, emphasized different emotions. Sometimes it’s a matter of personal preference as to which image is better or which image tells the best story.

It may take 200 frames to get the right nuance. Or it may take only one. But when you cast your visual perceptions aloft, let them understand the language and feel the photographic moment.