Pictures Tell a Thousand Words

This is a photo I took 3 years ago of a film strip I found with some of my baby photos. The ironic part is that I took this picture on Snapchat, which is evident from the text in the foreground of my photo. In the space of 17 years or less, we have gone from having photos taken using a film strip, to having a camera that we carry round with us 24/7 with various ways to edit the picture that we can see straight away.

The process of taking pictures has changed rapidly over the years due to the influence of technology, starting from things as simple as the quality of the photo itself.

Take a look at the baby pictures of myself and my sisters. It is quite evident that it isn’t just my mum’s photography skills that have improved over the years. The biggest change between these pictures though is the fact that my baby picture is actually a picture taken on a phone of a developed picture from a film strip. Whereas both of my sister’s baby pictures were taken on phones and only phones. Because of this reason, we have so many more baby pictures of my sisters than of me. Simply because it is so much easier to take a picture nowadays.

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This easily accessible nature of taking pictures has now developed to the stage we are at today. As one of the most favoured purposes of pictures nowadays, pictures are used to convey a message, whether this be a picture of ourselves with a certain facial expression, or using random pictures as a canvas for our messages, or showing our friends some new clothes we’ve bought or food we’ve just prepared.

But why choose to take these specific pictures?

When pictures are sent as a message, they usually have a hidden indexical meaning behind them that is being conveyed, implying that there is more behind the message than you realise when you first look at it. Everything within that picture will continue to add to the orignal narrative of the message, so much that the picture becomes its own “speech act.”

So next time you receive a picture from a friend (including a Snapchat), have a look at what they have actually taken a picture of. Does it have some kind of hidden meaning or message behind it? What are they trying to infer from that picture? You never know what you might discover.