Photomontage: A Viewer’s Guide to Looking at Photography Reflection

After reading "A Viewer's Guide to Looking at Photography", I feel as though my understanding for examining photographs has changed dramatically. At first, I used to initially look at just who was in the picture and where it was taken at, but now after digesting what James Brooke pointed out that has all changed. Now, I look for the meaning in all of the contents of the image. Everything from shapes to colors, to facial expressions and lines. Brooke goes on to state that after the observation of the photos, how we interpret and make sense of what is taking place in the image is open to any sort of perception as long as it has validity. With that you need to take into consideration the logic of your findings, and are asking "why" of everything you detected in the photos. A strong point that Brooke mentions is that the first step of the four-step process of analyzing photos, Description, is the most important because it forces you to come to conclusions about the photo. The other steps (Formal Analysis, Interpretation and Evaluation) could essentially be gone away with because there will always be a certain form to photographs that rely on the description. I would agree that the first time you look at a picture is the most pivotal in terms of how your brain is able to capture the essence that is situation on the surface of the image. You look at the picture and instantaneously tell who's in it, what's going on, where are they, are the people/figures showing some sort of emotion, were they in the middle of an action, etc. These types of questions can be answered in a matter of seconds just by scanning the image.