"You know, it would be interesting if we could give everyone on this list who wishes to participate a short assignment I used to give my photo students: find a photograph (yours or someone else's) you think is wholly admirable or successful or "good" or however you wish to phrase it, and write a short defense of it.
It would be enlightening to see how we differ in what we like. --Mike" It would be interesting, although the explanations that folks give for why they like something may not accurate. I don't think any or us can really understand how our own thinking "works". Even if there are rules they may be too complicated to apply easily and all we get are some derivative "rules of thumb". After all, when you like an image, what actually happens, e.g., dopamine levels rise? There was an interesting article in a recent Scientific American about a fractal analysis of Pollock (sp?)'s paintings. Although part of me finds this kind of reductionism appalling, it will arise increasingly as we improve our models of the brain and create more complicated "thinking" machines.
