It is clear from the way that Thomas Burrowes approached his work that he intended to collect and communicate as much detail as possible. In emulation of artists portraying military events, he deliberately re-shaped what he saw for the sake of telling a complete story. On occasion, Burrowes even manipulated perspective in order to ensure that his paintings were packed with a maximum of information.

In most of his images of Jones Falls, for example, the vantage point is even higher than the outcrop where a guardhouses was eventually built. In fact, it would have been difficult for Burrowes to observe everything that is captured in most of these paintings. Burrowes apparently moved back and forth across the building site, collecting a maximum of visual information, then used his imagination to integrate those observations into a single explanatory image.