.

Denotative and connotative meaning:

Denotative meaning: the literal face-value meaning of a sign
Connotative meaning: all the social, cultural, and historical meanings
that are added to a sign's literal meaning

denotation: The photo presents a boy riding a bike.

connotation: For viewers, this could stir up their own personal
experiences with learning how to ride a bike, childhood memories of
playing outside, etc.
denotation: This is obviously a digitally altered image of a clown
walking down a street with people.
connotation: The digital manipulation of this image might symbolize
standing out, being different, and having a sense of individuality.

denotation: The photo shows a man sitting on some steps next to a body
of water.
connotation: The solitude of the man could present an essence of sorrow,
tranquility, or thoughtfulness, depending on the viewer's interpretation
and possibly their own personal experiences.
denotation: The photo presents a crowd of people gathered at times
square.
connotation: Seeing this picture could bring up thoughts of New Years'
Eve spent at times square, the hustle and bustle of city life, etc.

How image is built and read by mind:

Reading is a complex, multi-layered process, starting with detecting
letters, recognising words and groups of words, then analysing sentence
structure and meaning.

Different areas of the brain build up information about the scenes, actions
and characters, relating them to what you already know and feel. Visual
and auditory areas of your brain are at work when you read, as you
subvocalise the words when one of the book’s characters is speaking.
Your lips and tongue may even move, your spine might tingle and your
muscles may tense in response to the story. All this contributes to what
we think of as pictures in our head – yet in reality our brains probably
contain no such thing.

Indeed, recent theories treat vision more like an activity or interaction with
the world rather than a picture-making process. Oddly enough, more
detailed written descriptions may not result in richer or more satisfying
mental imagery. Sometimes, the simplest descriptions allow you to create
your own imagined world with far more detail and emotional
involvement.

Read an image:
Learning to read images – from a technical perspective and not a
conceptual one – is something that I believe all photographers must be
able to do, as it allows you to get a rough guide on what settings may have
been used to create an image.
To begin reading images you must have, at the very least, a good
understanding of aperture, shutter speed and to a lesser extent, ISO.
You’ll want to understand how these things affect the image in different
ways. For example, if you saw an image with a lot of motion blur, you
would know from your understanding of shutter speed that a slower
shutter speed was used.
As you become more proficient with lighting and off-camera flash, you
can even read how the subject was lit with artificial lighting, and begin to
replicate how it was done. But don’t worry! This article will be focussing
on the three major aspects of photography exposure (aperture, shutter
speed and ISO) to help you begin your journey to reading images.

Steps:
Step 1: Shutter Speed – Fast or Slow?
I find that determining whether a fast or slow shutter speed was used first,
can help greatly when it comes to determining aperture and ISO later. The
first thing you will want to ask yourself when assessing shutter speed is;
was it fast or slow? This can be decided by how much, or how little,
motion blur is present in the image, as that is what shutter speed controls.
If everything in the image is pin sharp, and there is absolutely no motion
blur at all, then a fast shutter speed would have been used. However, if
there is a lot of motion blur, then a slow shutter speed was used.
Here are some points that you can take out of knowing if the shutter speed
is fast or slow:

But how fast is a fast shutter speed, and at what point does the shutter
speed become slow? To answer this, think of your shutter speed in relation
to your subject’s speed. For example, when photographing sports or other
fast action, you may find using a shutter speed of 1/1000th is required to
freeze your subjects. This is because your subjects are moving quite fast.
However, if you were to photograph people walking down the street, you
would not need the same shutter speed, as your subjects are not moving
as fast.
Below are examples of slow and fast shutter speeds. Notice the presence
of motion blur in the images where a slower shutter speed was used, but
action is frozen with a fast shutter speed. In images that will use a slow
shutter speed, it is often recommended you use a tripod to stabilize your
camera, and prevent camera shake.
What isn’t important is knowing the exact shutter speed; that is something
that you will be able to experiment with to get the results you want. All
you are doing here is identifying if a slow or fast shutter speed was used,
to give you a starting point.

Step 2: Aperture – Large or Small?

In step one I mentioned that determining whether a fast or slow shutter
speed was used first, can greatly help you in determining the aperture.
Here’s why. If you are familiar with the exposure triangle you will know
that in nearly all cases when a fast shutter speed is used, it is associated
with a large aperture (small f-number). Conversely, the slower the shutter
speed, the smaller the aperture becomes. So if you see a photo that has
motion blur present, it is highly likely that the photographer used a smaller
aperture; or if you see a photo where moving objects are frozen, the
photographer has most likely used a larger aperture to enable a faster
shutter speed.
Another way you can determine the aperture is by looking for bokeh, or
subject isolation. The more bokeh that is present in the image, the more
the subject is isolated. To achieve this, the photographer would use a
larger aperture. On the other hand, if everything in the image is in focus,
then the photographer employed a smaller aperture to increase their depth
of field.

Step 3: ISO
ISO is one of the parameters that isn’t so important in determining what
settings may have been used when reading an image. Use ISO to get the
settings that you need to use, to create the shot you want. For example, if
you want to use the slowest shutter speed you can, set your camera’s ISO
to its lowest setting. Conversely, if you want to use a very fast shutter
speed, you may find that you have to increase your ISO.

Step 4: Focal Length

Focal length is something that is often overlooked in images, but it is a
very important element indeed. It does more than simply allow a
photograph to add more in the frame, or zoom in closer. Different focal
lengths evoke different emotions in the viewer when looking at an image.
For instance, if a wide angle lens was used, it places the viewer in the
scene and can make them feel like they were there; whereas a longer focal
length places the viewer further away from the subject, and evokes a more
voyeur emotion.
The great thing about focal length is that it is quite easy to distinguish
approximately which one was used. To make it simpler, breaking down
focal lengths in to three groups can help greatly.
Wide: <50mm (i.e. 14-50mm on full frame, 10-35mm on cropped or APS-
C sensor)
Normal: ~50mm-85mm (35-56mm cropped sensor)
Telephoto: 85mm+ (130mm+ on cropped sensor)
You can use the presence of compression to distinguish the different types
of focal length. A wide angle lens accentuates the foreground and
increases distances in the frame, as well as having a very wide field of
view. This effect increases as the focal length decreases – or gets wider.
On the other end, a telephoto lens will give you much more compression,
and make distances in the frame look shorter. Their field of view will
decrease, and the affects of aperture, particularly larger apertures, will be
more pronounced. That’s why f/2.8 at 16mm looks different than f/2.8 at
200mm, if your subject is kept the same size in the frame.
Here is a small table with examples of the same scene photographed from
the same point, but with different focal lengths.
Now you have had a quick introduction on how to read images.
Remember, knowing the exact settings is not important, but knowing how
to get an approximate guess is better than not knowing anything at all!
With experience, you will become more proficient at reading images, and
will be able to guess with more precision. The more you understand
aperture, shutter speed, and ISO, the better you will be at reading images.
Along the way, you will also learn that different genres within
photography use a different set of settings. For example, most landscape
photographers will use smaller apertures, lower ISOs, and slower shutter
speeds; whereas sports shooters for instance, will generally use higher
ISOs, larger apertures, and faster shutter speeds.

References:
 http://students.smcm.edu/ampugay/denotation&connotation.html.
 https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/why-do-we-get-a-
mental-picture-when-reading/.
 https://digital-photography-school.com/4-steps-on-how-to-read-
images-and-learn-to-replicate-the-results/.