Felipe,

Let me just see if I understand you correctly, do you mean what it is that I see first before I take a picture, or what I see when I evaluate someone else's pictures?

It is someone else's pictures.

This is such a hard question to answer.

I think the first place one's eye goes is generally the area of greatest contrast. In a Black and white picture, this will be an area containing a clash between light and dark, in a color photograph, it will be a clash in contrasting colors.

There are, however, so many exceptions to this rule. In a picture containing a patern, for instance, one's eye will naturally flow to a flaw in the pattern. Then, if a picture contains a view of a big empty field, with a human figure walking through it, our human eyes naturally gravitate to the human figure.

As for what I like to see, what I like is a good clean image, meaning that the composition is focussed on communicating a single message.

I remember my old photo-guru saying that the problem with how beginner photographers take pictures of landscapes, is that they try to climb on a hill and photograph the whole world.

A much better way is to get in close, and to photograph one single element, like a rock in a stream, or a single peak of a mountaintop.

What we need to remember about photography is that it is, at its core, nothing more than communication between individuals, and the less cluttered you can make the communication, and the cleared the message, the better.

1. I see the colours first. I'm not a huge fan of black and white photography. I adore photographs with bright colours or big colourful objects such as circles that catch my attention.

2. When your mind goes pro, what do you like to see?

After that i focus on angle of the photo.
Some photos are beautiful but could be made so much better if the angle was changed slightly. 

I also look at DOF. If there are a lot of distractions in the background the image becomes consfuding to me as to what the main subject is.

Thats just the way i am i guess

Hello Carolyn,

I can see that you like colorful photographs, I have seen some of yours and I must say that they are great!

Thanks for your comments, I agree with you on the angle part, I am incredibly new to photography but I have noticed that same thing, one of the things that I am doing at the moment is precisely that, playing around with all the different ways that you can see the same thing and the way that you can achive a complete different result.

Ed, I am there with you in simplicity, and you really got me thinking in the communication part, I will take that as one of my top 10 rules from now on.

Thanks for your comments.

Felipe