Why have I expended all this effort in writing when I could more easily communicate with images? I’ve been looking at the statistics for the photographs and other images that I have on Flickr, and collectively they have generated 233,869 views over a period of six-and-a-half years. That seems quite a substantial number to me. I have little skill as a photographer – the minutiae of lenses, f-stops, shutter speeds and such like are a closed book to me. My camera is switched to an all-purpose setting, and all I do is point and shoot, generally with indifferent results. Many of my photos are quick snaps using my Blackberry phone. I don’t travel to interesting places, nor find myself in the middle of dramatic events, indeed I make every effort not to do so.
So even an indifferent photographer with no sense of adventure can get nearly quarter of a million views on Flickr, from what are currently 1,985 images. That’s 188 views per image. I don’t know how many words I’ve written online overall, but my Bioscope blog comprised some one million words and has to date generated 1,245,375 visits, or a little over one visitor per word. Alternatively, the site has 1,380 posts, so an average of 900 visits per post. So more readers of texts than viewers of images, but it’s so much effort to write, to think about what words to say and then the sheet slog of typing them all out. Why don’t I just point and shoot, and communicate the easy way?
It’s not a case of which is the more truthful, or useful. Communicating by words and communicating by images have their different ways of getting at the truth, and are useful in their own particular ways. I guess it it boils down to how we think, and I think in words, and less easily in images. Which is ironic, given that much of my professional career has been given over to argue the case for the special value of images – moving images, that is (and if I’m a bad photographer, I’m a still worse filmmaker and very seldom film anything at all). It may be the way that I think, and because it is an effort, and may involve some skill, that the results may feel more satisfaxctory. If I felt the urgent need to communicate through images, I would work to acquire the skills to do so, or I would feel driven to acquire those skills. But I don’t. Yet it’s a shame, when the results of a simple click of a shutter can catch the eye of thousands.
Here are a few personal favourites from the photos on my Flickr account:
