Youngprer,
Photographic memory, from my own experience, is just that, you see a picture (photo) of whatever it is that you want to see/recall with your mind's eyes. In fact, it's possible to see better than in the outer world (I don't want to say reality) because you can zoom in on things in your mind. I can't do that any more but I could when I was in primary school where I had to do quite a bit of rote learning. I remember sometimes I studied my history notes so many times in my effort to learn them all by heart that I just started to see the pages, with all the words on them, and the funny thing is, sometimes when I recited a page and came to a place where I couldn't remember a word, I would try to see the page in my mind to find that word, and exactly there, a word would be missing. Very annoying. But usually, the word would appear/come to mind eventually.
You are in grade 9, right? My daughter is in the same grade. Last Monday evening, she was all stressed about studying for a History test on the Reformation. You mentioned something about having difficulties with organization. Well, she always types/writes out the things she needs to study/know for a particular test. It's a habit that her middle school History teacher started her on. So when she studies, the organization is already there. (It's also a great help to have these notes come finals time.) Anyway, she asked me to quiz her just before bedtime, and usually I have to keep scanning the notes to make sure that she's got everything because she doesn't rote learn and so she tells me the info all mixed up and out of sequence. But last Monday night, she told me everying in exactly the sequence that the notes had it. We were both amazed! This had never happened before. She noticed too that this made it alot easier to remember the dates, at least the years. (But she still didn't know her stuff word for word the way I used to, but then she's always learned by understanding, she's never been a rote learner.) Last night she had to study for a German test, full of lists, like which prepositions had to be conjugated with which case, etc. When she asked me to quiz her, we were amazed again. Not only did she know her lists, but all in sequence. And for the first time she had the same experience I had had, that she could see the pages in front of her, when she got a blank in her recitation and tried to see it on the page, she found a blank there too.
Want to guess what made the difference in her learning, or rather, style of recall? She started listening to the Memory Supercharger paraliminal last Sunday night. That's the only thing she did that's different. Otherwise she studied the same way as usual.
Some schools of meditation use visualization as a meditation technique. Some practitioners of the Tibetan schools use mandalas as objects of meditation. Here, the meditator first looks at the picture with the eyes open, then closes the eyes, and tries to see it again/visualize it with the eyes closed. This is practised until every detail of the mandala can be visualized/recreated in the mind. http://www.jyh.dk/indengl.htm#Mandala
There are also people who are naturally gifted with photographic memory. ( I have a feeling we all are, it's just a matter of learning/practising how to access.) They see a picture and then can 'see' it again, and again, whenever they want. And they just do it, without intention nor volition. Some people can do the equivalent with other senses.
Photographic memory does not directly aid comprehension. It's great for visual learning, such as art. Otherwise, for the printed word, run with photoreading. So what if you can reproduce pages and pages of a book in your mind. Don't forget they are stored there as photos/pictures, to get anything out of them you've still got to READ them. 
[This message has been edited by Hel (edited May 23, 2002).]
[This message has been edited by Hel (edited May 23, 2002).]
