I'm not an expert, although I have experience that teaches me that I truly have benefitted from photoreading. I take almost no time to get into state. I just let my eyes prove it to me. When the book is before me in soft focus, either with the blip page or with the four corners kind of 'evident' to me, then I'm ready. I might take a breath or two first. Also I try not to be irritated about something else.
You know what the hardest part of photoreading is? It's caring about the book enough to have an active purpose, an active question chain, to use in looking through it afterwards. I think that many people, when they read, just want the book to do the work. They want the author to get that information into their heads with no effort. The traditional reading technique is very passive towards the text: even when many notes are taken the comprehension in a global sense is quite passive. Wanting to think actively takes commitment. Perhaps the corollary to this is: wanting to have a reason to read, also takes commitment. Think about that: to read actively, you have to actively produce within yourself a reason to read. I think many readers leave even that to the author.
