With my new site now live I have found myself needing to take pictures of battles more reliably. One method that I’ve found particular handy and more importantly, fast, is using hand gestures on photos to mark out the course of the game and what’s happening in specific photos. This is particularly useful for specific or complex events that may be lost and forgotten over the course of time.

These are the three methods I use to help me remember my games and write my battle reports. Note, these images are not for publishing with battle reports, they exist for your own benefit only to determine which photos fall into which turn. From this you can reconstruct the game pretty well.

Turns

I use my fingers to mark the start of each player turn. Two fingers pointing up is the top of turn two, three fingers pointing down is the bottom of turn three. I take these photos at the start of each player turn. I can then use these hand photos to find the photos for each turn and write the report accordingly.

Shooting

I also use my hand to show shooting or psychic attacks. This can be handy for showing particularly important events for complex events where a simple summary image will not suffice. I use my thumb to point to the firer and my fingers to point to the unit(s) attacked.

Markers, counters and cards

Close ups of cards and markers can help show which players had which psychic powers. You can also use your fingers to mark which unit ordered which other unit to use First Rank Fire Second Rank Fire.

Hand Gestures in Summary

Using these three techniques it’s easy to reconstruct a battle using just photos. Perhaps you won’t remember every little aspect of the game but you’ll get the important events for a battle report.