A close reading is a critical analysis of a text, picture, painting, movie, or an event that focuses on significant aspects or patterns to create deep understanding of the text and trying to craft the meaning behind it. Reading pictures is something we do in everyday life, especially when we look at things like advertisements, newspapers, and other media like video games and web pages. Companies depend on us to find meaning in the pictures and images they portray to us and by closely looking at images we are ale to give the images an embedded meaning. In this essay I will be doing a close reading on multiple images and digging into what the images depict, whom it is directed at, and how the image can appeal to our emotions. 

In the first image you see a man walking through a large field on his way to the tree line. When you take a closer look at this image you can tell it’s a hunter from the orange vest, and hat and you can faintly see the barrel and butt end of a rifle. In the background of the image you see a vast tree line of the forest in late fall, the dark colored leaves left on the trees and the partly cloud covered sky. Though it may seem like the man is the main character of the image, when looked at from a different angle you can see the hunter is actually just one small part of a bigger picture. The great outdoors is main character of this picture. The image is aimed towards those people who find a calmness and serenity in the outdoors and it has the potential for evoking nostalgic emotions. As well as nostalgia many would get the feeling of anticipation or eagerness that comes with the thrill of the hunt. Never knowing what may lie beyond that next ridgeline or in the next valley. Hunting is something that as a young child is taught to you by a father figure or a close family member. In those teachings you learn to respect the world around you and find a love for those crisp fall mornings, long walks to the deer stand, huddling around the fire to stay warm, and the elaborate tales of the huge buck that got away. 

In the next image you can see the early morning sun starting to light up the sky and in that light you can see the outlines of duck decoys on a pond. A large piece of this picture that sticks out is the sun coming up and shining light onto the world below. As the pinkish yellow glow of the sun creeps over the tree line it’s like the world is coming alive and showing everything that it has to offer. The colors, the openness and possibility of the day ahead, all of these things help to bring out emotion in anyone looking at the image. It is more than just an early fall morning, ducks on the water or a hunter in a duck blind, it is being able see the world come alive from an angle not many people get to see. One of these specific emotions that comes to mind is anticipation. Anticipation for the day ahead, and what the possibilities of that day could be. As a hunter in that early morning sun your heart starts to beat faster and you get the shakes in your hands knowing that sun is waking the ducks and they will soon be flying and looking for a nice calm patch of water to get their early morning meal. As well as the emotions that can be brought out by seeing that sunrise over that calm water one gets a sense of gratefulness, grateful to have the opportunity to see the kind of natural beauty that our world has to offer. 

In the two images I described above they have much in common, early mornings, the outdoors and the strong emotions that both images can make us feel.  What makes these images so powerful is the emotion and nostalgia attached to them. We have all been outside, seen a sunrise or a sunset, a lake or the tree line of a forest, that isn’t it. It is the memory and feeling that is attached to those things we see. Remembering the first time you were allowed to tag along on deer hunt with your dad. Getting to spend the whole day walking through the fields and calling in deer, then taking those long walks back to camp to gather around a fire and tell our stories of the day. That type of emotion we feel is what brings people back to the outdoors. Yes, the thrill of the hunt is real and many do chase those elusive bucks and calm waters that fill with migrating birds, but when you look past that it really is just about going out and being free and alive. We are all searching for something and some of us just want to find that feeling of just being in awe of the world around us and all that it has to offer.
