“A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words”, this is a very common saying but it never made much sense to me. However, not too long ago, I finally understood what the saying probably means, or at least my interpretation of the same.
I love photography. I waited for quite a while before I bought my first camera a couple of years ago because I wanted to make sure I buy a good one, not just one which is slim and looks nice. That is what I normally call a girls camera – slim and sleek with very few features. I finally purchased a semi professional camera, or what was mentioned as one in the prosumer segment, and have been on a clicking spree ever since. When I write this blog, I have over 22 GB of photographs on my computer and almost all of them have been taken by me. I never really liked taking videos, so I chose not to buy a video camera, which I could easily have. Somehow videos leave very little to the imagination, and for me it is a lot more fun to appreciate the beauty of a good picture because you get a long time to appreciate it and the minor details that may come with it.
I officially finished my Engineering around 5 months ago, but as our final semester involves project work, everyone had split up by the end of last year. At that time, when I would browse through the many snaps that I had, I finally realised what the above mentioned saying meant. Every picture tells a story, and it is up to the people who look at the picture to understand what the story is. Looking at a picture you are flooded with memories and can recall, vividly if I may add, the events that were taking place when the picture was taken, as well as the situation immediately preceding and succeeding what is shown. To the person who was not involved in the situation, it could be a normal scene with friends, but those who were actually there, who had experienced it, looking at a picture sends a spark to your brain cells and you are transported to the time and place where the event actually took place, and you relive the moment as an observer.
The pure, unadulterated emotions of agony, ecstasy, pain, pleasure, humiliation, malice, innocence, pride, fury, relief, desperation etc are all on display in a single frame and depending on what kind of mood is depicted, have the ability to bring a similar emotion on to your face. Watching these pictures with someone who was there as well, inevitably leads to a long discussion of that time and place, and then to a general conversation of the yesteryears and the differences between then and now. You can also see the transition and the passage of time through which a person has travelled. The different fads he may have been involved in and the different experiments that he carried out.
A single picture tells a fairly vivid story, but a montage of images of a single event ensures that you relive the event in its entirety without missing a single detail. Digital cameras and mobiles with cameras have provided a medium with near infinite storage capacity as well as ensured that you almost always have a camera with you. So, the number of pictures taken has increased hundredfold. This way almost every moment is caught which can be used for several purposes.
This brings me to another meaning of the phrase that I am discussing. You can have very long discussions on a single photograph provided that you are jobless enough. So I am assuming that it was a little exaggerated and it became a thousand words in order to depict the length of the discussion. Different people have different interpretations of photographs and so there are many variants of the same that come to the front. These variants ignite a chain of thoughts and you get several points of views and the actual meaning of the photograph might just end up being overshadowed by something else entirely. Looking at pictures with friends or family is an extremely time consuming and fun activity. Hearing the descriptions of images from someone who was present there is really entertaining, but sometimes pictures are quite self explanatory and you just look at it and understand everything that was probably happening despite no one actually explaining the details. What actually happened may be different from what you perceived though.
One more interpretation that I thought possible was perhaps the number of words that could be used to describe a picture or a scene. The adjectives that could be used in order to laud or loathe a picture. Every human being walking on this planet is a critic and has an opinion which is either original or influenced by someone else. So whenever they see a picture there are a few words that come to the fore and are sort of attached to the image. A thousand words may be quite farfetched but then again this is my opinion and understanding of the phrase.
I had once thought of putting the phrase into a test using its absolute literal meaning. I had intended to use a book which had been converted into a movie, provided the movie was loyal to the book and check if the phrase was actually true. I would assign say ten seconds as an image and then consider it to be a thousand words then try to equate whether the movie was actually equal to the number of words used in the book. Thankfully, I never went about doing this, but if I did, the movie would the ‘The Godfather’.
Just to give you an idea of just how many words constitute A Thousand Words, this sentence contains the thousandth word of the post and it should be a sort of an indicator of how many words they associate with an image. Of course writing a thousand words takes a lot more effort than saying them out loud.
Honestly speaking, I think a thousand words is quite exaggerated but then, everyone has a tendency to exaggerate, so it actually makes sense. Besides some pictures have very few words that you may want to attach to them but on the other hand, some images talk to you and have a long story attached to them. A picture may not be worth a thousand words, but it is definitely priceless and can spark off many conversations.
I love photography. I waited for quite a while before I bought my first camera a couple of years ago because I wanted to make sure I buy a good one, not just one which is slim and looks nice. That is what I normally call a girls camera – slim and sleek with very few features. I finally purchased a semi professional camera, or what was mentioned as one in the prosumer segment, and have been on a clicking spree ever since. When I write this blog, I have over 22 GB of photographs on my computer and almost all of them have been taken by me. I never really liked taking videos, so I chose not to buy a video camera, which I could easily have. Somehow videos leave very little to the imagination, and for me it is a lot more fun to appreciate the beauty of a good picture because you get a long time to appreciate it and the minor details that may come with it.
I officially finished my Engineering around 5 months ago, but as our final semester involves project work, everyone had split up by the end of last year. At that time, when I would browse through the many snaps that I had, I finally realised what the above mentioned saying meant. Every picture tells a story, and it is up to the people who look at the picture to understand what the story is. Looking at a picture you are flooded with memories and can recall, vividly if I may add, the events that were taking place when the picture was taken, as well as the situation immediately preceding and succeeding what is shown. To the person who was not involved in the situation, it could be a normal scene with friends, but those who were actually there, who had experienced it, looking at a picture sends a spark to your brain cells and you are transported to the time and place where the event actually took place, and you relive the moment as an observer.
The pure, unadulterated emotions of agony, ecstasy, pain, pleasure, humiliation, malice, innocence, pride, fury, relief, desperation etc are all on display in a single frame and depending on what kind of mood is depicted, have the ability to bring a similar emotion on to your face. Watching these pictures with someone who was there as well, inevitably leads to a long discussion of that time and place, and then to a general conversation of the yesteryears and the differences between then and now. You can also see the transition and the passage of time through which a person has travelled. The different fads he may have been involved in and the different experiments that he carried out.
A single picture tells a fairly vivid story, but a montage of images of a single event ensures that you relive the event in its entirety without missing a single detail. Digital cameras and mobiles with cameras have provided a medium with near infinite storage capacity as well as ensured that you almost always have a camera with you. So, the number of pictures taken has increased hundredfold. This way almost every moment is caught which can be used for several purposes.
This brings me to another meaning of the phrase that I am discussing. You can have very long discussions on a single photograph provided that you are jobless enough. So I am assuming that it was a little exaggerated and it became a thousand words in order to depict the length of the discussion. Different people have different interpretations of photographs and so there are many variants of the same that come to the front. These variants ignite a chain of thoughts and you get several points of views and the actual meaning of the photograph might just end up being overshadowed by something else entirely. Looking at pictures with friends or family is an extremely time consuming and fun activity. Hearing the descriptions of images from someone who was present there is really entertaining, but sometimes pictures are quite self explanatory and you just look at it and understand everything that was probably happening despite no one actually explaining the details. What actually happened may be different from what you perceived though.
One more interpretation that I thought possible was perhaps the number of words that could be used to describe a picture or a scene. The adjectives that could be used in order to laud or loathe a picture. Every human being walking on this planet is a critic and has an opinion which is either original or influenced by someone else. So whenever they see a picture there are a few words that come to the fore and are sort of attached to the image. A thousand words may be quite farfetched but then again this is my opinion and understanding of the phrase.
I had once thought of putting the phrase into a test using its absolute literal meaning. I had intended to use a book which had been converted into a movie, provided the movie was loyal to the book and check if the phrase was actually true. I would assign say ten seconds as an image and then consider it to be a thousand words then try to equate whether the movie was actually equal to the number of words used in the book. Thankfully, I never went about doing this, but if I did, the movie would the ‘The Godfather’.
Just to give you an idea of just how many words constitute A Thousand Words, this sentence contains the thousandth word of the post and it should be a sort of an indicator of how many words they associate with an image. Of course writing a thousand words takes a lot more effort than saying them out loud.
Honestly speaking, I think a thousand words is quite exaggerated but then, everyone has a tendency to exaggerate, so it actually makes sense. Besides some pictures have very few words that you may want to attach to them but on the other hand, some images talk to you and have a long story attached to them. A picture may not be worth a thousand words, but it is definitely priceless and can spark off many conversations.
pic·ture [pik-cher] –noun
1. A visual representation of a person, object, or scene, as a painting, drawing, photograph, etc.
2. Any visible image, however produced
3. A mental image.
4. A particular image or reality as portrayed in an account or description; depiction; version.
5. A tableau, as in theatrical representation.
6. A person, thing, group, or scene regarded as resembling a work of pictorial art in beauty, fineness of appearance, etc.
7. A visible or concrete embodiment of some quality or condition.
8. A situation or set of circumstances.
9. The image on a computer monitor, the viewing screen of a television set, or a motion-picture screen.
4 comments:
Really nice post...
Another nice observation.
But I guess you didn't write this out of boredom (you said earlier that you wrote only when you had nothing else to do) or did you?
Is this you maalik? Did someone hack your blog?
Blaady awesome, if you ask me. Helped me understand the scale of a thousand words!
Maalik, no one hacked my blog. Just thought I should advertise some of my old posts. Have been too lazy to write anything new.
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