A picture is worth a thousand words?
- Thread starter pljames
- Start date
This image says allot just by looking at it, to me, doesn't it say allot to you without even knowing anything about who they are or where they are?
Images can express a great many things that don't need words to explain them thereby making it easier to take a photograph of someone who doesn't want to be spoken to at the time.
Ophiolite
Valued Senior Member
I have frequently dealt with equipment failures in oil and gas drilling. I have interrogated indivduals as to the condition of the failed item of equipment. In most cases their description bears scant comparison with what is revealed by one or two photographs. Even with meticulous, precise questioning the ability of most people to convey what they are seeing is lamentable.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Much of what we express in words are thoughts, feelings, memories, etc. Pictures are more oriented toward facts.
Although obviously it is possible to express facts in words, and pictures can certainly be manipulated to confuse or deceive.
According to Wikipedia:
Although obviously it is possible to express facts in words, and pictures can certainly be manipulated to confuse or deceive.
According to Wikipedia:
Pictures establish physical relationships, what one might call relationships among "data", better than words do. For a simple case, compare a graph with the set of numerical data points it displays.
I have had experiences similar to Ophiolite's, in the course of moving heavy things in front of inexperienced people - many times I have heard someone describe to someone else what I had done right in front of them, almost unrecognizably (no, I did not put that thing on my back - it was in front of me the whole time, and a picture would show that immediately).
But pictures also short-circuit the rational or logical filter we apply when reconstructing meaning from words - the process of reconstruction of scene, of providing context so forth, we use to obtain meaning from incoming language, by its nature evokes the uncertainties, gaps in the information, places where the story needs filling in, etc., whereas a picture needs no reconstruction, and taps its associations directly without making room for question (what we call in reading a book "suspension of disbelief" is automatic with pictures).
This is similar to the standard hypnotic technique, or story-telling practice, or magician's trick, of telling a story within a background when it is the background you wish to establish.
So it is generally easier to fool people with pictures, than with words - to convey false states of affairs. The viewer will do most of the hard work - building a plausible context, incorporating the features of the picture into their (now suitably altered) reality - for you. Instead of a linear stream of story building words each triggering the evocation of its possible contradiction, the uncontradicted claim is simply accepted as information (tell people the sky is blue, and the possibility that it might have been or maybe is or tomorrow will be orange comes into play automatically. Show a picture of a scene with a blue sky, that doesn't happen without conscious effort).
So in the picture above - the rose on the coffin, the woman with the child - a few words might be worth more. Say: "A visit to Stalin's tomb was the final step in purifying the chosen orphan for sacrifice".
I have had experiences similar to Ophiolite's, in the course of moving heavy things in front of inexperienced people - many times I have heard someone describe to someone else what I had done right in front of them, almost unrecognizably (no, I did not put that thing on my back - it was in front of me the whole time, and a picture would show that immediately).
But pictures also short-circuit the rational or logical filter we apply when reconstructing meaning from words - the process of reconstruction of scene, of providing context so forth, we use to obtain meaning from incoming language, by its nature evokes the uncertainties, gaps in the information, places where the story needs filling in, etc., whereas a picture needs no reconstruction, and taps its associations directly without making room for question (what we call in reading a book "suspension of disbelief" is automatic with pictures).
This is similar to the standard hypnotic technique, or story-telling practice, or magician's trick, of telling a story within a background when it is the background you wish to establish.
So it is generally easier to fool people with pictures, than with words - to convey false states of affairs. The viewer will do most of the hard work - building a plausible context, incorporating the features of the picture into their (now suitably altered) reality - for you. Instead of a linear stream of story building words each triggering the evocation of its possible contradiction, the uncontradicted claim is simply accepted as information (tell people the sky is blue, and the possibility that it might have been or maybe is or tomorrow will be orange comes into play automatically. Show a picture of a scene with a blue sky, that doesn't happen without conscious effort).
So in the picture above - the rose on the coffin, the woman with the child - a few words might be worth more. Say: "A visit to Stalin's tomb was the final step in purifying the chosen orphan for sacrifice".
Then again the words could say "here's a child and mother saying farewell to their husband and father" couldn't they? That's why the saying goes "a picture is worth a 1000 words". Many words could be used in depicting any picture so you've proven the statement true by showing us your example of just one of those depictions.