While pictures do have impact, they do so as part of a larger social system.
A photograph is shot, cropped, edited. It is selected, and placed next to other photographs, to text.
It is published.
We might, observing the results, say "the photographed intended to smear so-and-so" or whatever. but in reality there is the photographer, the photo-editor, the publisher all in play. If, collectively, they are truly taking a position, as often as not they are simply reflected a position that already exists. Perhaps they are amplifying it. Perhaps not.
We see pictures, we read text, we talk to people. We form opinions and develop ideas. Pictures and words simultaneously shape and reflect those ideas, in a fractally complicated system of feedback.
My favorite touchstone here is Nick Ut's picture of "Napalm Girl"
This is often thought of as a turning point in the Vietnam conflict, but it is not. It was shot very late in the conflict, the drawdown of US troops was well underway. That the US was bugging out was well established at this point.
The photograph was selected and published not as some sort of "game changer" but as a reflection and amplification of the already existing zeitgeist. The picture is not "we should get outta there!" but "we were right, leaving is the right thing to do."
So, if there truly IS a pattern to the way Trump is photographed, the reasons for that pattern are probably pretty complex. Part of it surely is related to nothing more than the different style of access each president grants the press, holding them at arm's length in this context, excluding them from that, and embracing them in another.
Part of it is surely personal style. Trump seems to rarely smile, for example, while Obama smiled a lot. I think. This, again, COULD be a reflection of slanted media, but could also reasonably be simply a difference in the mannerisms of the two men.
And then, of course, there are the biases possessed by the staff who deliver these pictures to us, AND the biases of the population they are striving to reflect, as noted above.
And finally, we have weirdos like Michael Shaw cherry picking pictures and then writing his own bizarro interpretations of them, unsure even himself (or at least unclear) as to whether these represent some reality or Trump's mental state and political position, or whether the pictures illustrate some coherent political statement by the media team, or are merely accidents.
ETA: Worth noting, most of the cited tweeted pictures are in fact @readingThePix product. This Michael Shaw literally quoting himself as evidence. He does disclose this in fine print at the beginning, but the method is profoundly disingenuous. He should just include the picture inline and repeat the "analysis" rather than treating himself as a source of quotation.
