A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
© 2010 Wazari Wazir | A Picture is worth a Thousand Words | A Portrait of My Family
A picture is worth a thousand words, we have heard this quote, time and time again, and it was so true, sometimes words just not enough, we need to show it visually, so people can understand a story without telling it verbally. The quote above is sometimes attributed to emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, who said “Un bon croquis vaut mieux qu’un long discours,” or “A good sketch is better than a long speech”.
A picture above is a picture of my wife and my son, sharing a happy moment together, my wife try to teach my son to show with his finger “three” because this picture was taken during my son birthday August 22nd. With a picture, we don’t have to describe what happiness look like, with picture we don’t have to tell how happy they were, with picture we don’t have to tell what my son is wearing.
Even though a picture can tell so much without any written words but sometimes, a picture alone is not enough, is not strong enough to stand on it’s own, if I didn’t tell you why my wife teach my son how to show “three” with his little finger, people who look at this picture will never understand about it, and maybe you also might be wondering what my wife is trying to do or trying to teach my son. With a little bit of a caption, you know the full story. The “three” means a three years old, my son was three years old when this picture is taken.
I choose to share this picture in black and white because I want people to concentrate on the moment more than anything else, this is a very colorful picture, with a beautiful green foliage in the background and a very colorful clothes that my son and my wife is wearing but sometimes color is a distraction. It’s more about the moment and the story, and color just takes away.
Sometimes people ask me, how do I determine which picture look great in colors and which picture work great in black and white, I really have a hard times answering that question, I just don’t know, I just go by the feel, if I think the colors tend to be a distraction from the moment that I want to share, then I will convert my picture into black and white and try to “feel” it, if it goes straight to my heart, then that’s what right for me, there is no simple answer for that question, I guess it comes with experience, you just know it by the feel not by some practical theory or man made rules of photography.
I didn’t have a lot of pictures like this when I was a small kid like my son, our family is not rich, a camera back then is consider a luxury item rather than necessity, most of my picture during I was a small boy was taken by my cousin, relative or my uncle and now when I have a camera I try to take my family picture as much as I can, I don’t want to miss a moment. Insya’Allah, God Willing, when I was old enough, things will be easy for me to tell a story to my son, how he is growing up with a piece of a picture in my hand, by then I guess I can tell a thousand stories just from a piece of a picture in my hand.
Get The Secret HERE
