Picture of thousand of words

This weekend, as I was thinking about another topic for this long, arduous 1000-word essay, I suddenly thought of an idea, a clever idea. I thought of the phrase “a picture is worth thousands of words”. I was thinking of just posting a huge picture on the blog post and just put a caption of the bottom of that picture saying “this is worth thousands of word”. But then I thought of the risk of that action. I mean if I was the teacher, I would definitely give this guy a F. So I just decided not to use that tactic and tried to think of a new topic.

I really tried hard to think of an idea. I mean to write a 1000 word essay, you need a darn good idea, something you are willing to write about, or else it takes hours. I thought about writing about my recent personal experience but failed to find an inspiring or even entertaining event. I saw that many kids have written about their parents coming over this weekend but I couldn’t because my parents didn’t come over. So I was thinking about it again, about the topic. I decided to go on to the Scholars and read the “blogging” on the assignments to refresh my mind with what kinds of ideas are acceptable. It was pretty much limitless but the part where it said our blog can be something we talked about in class, I thought about analyzing. We pretty much only worked on some kind of analyzing skills in class lately.

As I was thinking about something to analyze, somehow, the phrase about a picture being worth thousands of words kept popped out of my head. That phrase definitely had some controversial matter in it. I decided to analyze that phrase just like how we are doing bunch of analysis in English class lately. First I questioned that phrase. Is picture really worth thousands of words? Yes but only to certain perspective. For the criteria of description I think picture is far better than words are. In fact in this case, picture can even worth millions of words. For example, you can just show other people how your new car looks like by picture rather than saying, “my car has two head lights that has straight bottom and curves up forty degrees and another twenty degrees …”. In that case I think unless that other person knows the brand and the car type, it is almost impossible for one to describe what his car looks like without using a picture. But I don’t think picture is always worth thousands of words, at least in the right sense.

I think with words, something that can be represented that the picture cannot. Personally, I hate writing and it is really hard for me to support what writing can do. But this I know for sure that sometimes, few words can be more powerful and understandable than a picture, which is supposed to be worth thousands of words, can be. Picture is just a picture and it leaves for each audience to understand in his or her own perspective. Picture sometimes has meaning or message in it but it is not always received by audience in the same way. For example, in our Everything’s an Argument book, we saw an American Flag with company logos instead of stars in the beginning of the semester. That definitely had a meaning to it and whoever made the design should have thought of one meaning, his perspective. However, we had little argument in our class, some people taking it as a negative sign saying that it represents how America is obsessed with products of America rather than the American county itself, while others were saying that design was positive because it represented diversity economic variation in America. Unless the designer intended to sprout a controversy about what he has made, his design did not carry out the job fully because not everyone had same idea about the message of the design. If that design was to be described in words, it would definitely take thousands of words, describing what each logo is and how they look like. However if the meaning of the design was described in words, it should have did so much better job. The pictorial design definitely simplified the thousands of words in simple easy picture but the meaning was not carried out in the right sense. This is what I meant above. Picture is worth thousands of words, but only in terms of describing something physically. Pictures incorporated with meaning cannot be accepted by the audience as the author intended to unless that picture with meaning is dead concrete, which is the rarely the case in my opinion.

Just think about it. I have written few blogs since the beginning of the year and if picture is worth thousands of words, each of my blogs could have been described in one picture. I don’t think that is going to work. Even if I do, not everyone is going to accept the meaning in a way I intended to do because everyone has his or her unique perspective. Unlike picture, which leaves the audience to view in their own perspective, words can guide the audience in the writer’s perspective. Writings can guide audience in one, straight way, because author talks his way through with explanations and evidences, unless the writings of the author is very broad. So, again, if I was the teacher, if a student sends a picture instead of 1000 word essay, I would give him F. It is not because he didn’t fulfill the requirement – thousand words- but because that essay wouldn’t have any focus that is straight. I think point of this blogging is to express our thought and unless we were expert at expressing message with a picture, the point would not carry out clearly. I believe that picture is worth thousands of words in describing only physical matters.