My soul mate recently asked me, “Where are the pictures on your blog? I miss them, it adds your sensitivity in your writings.” My natural response was that I lacked original pictures that represented the story, and I’ll probably add them in the future.

Later, her inquiry made me think, was it the picture or the writing that move people?
Does picture speak more than a thousand words, or do a hundred words illustrate an image which paint and lens can never generate?

She also reminded me of a film I saw on the plane a few months ago, called “Words and Pictures”, about a competition between an art teacher and an English teacher to prove which one is more important: words or pictures. The movie wasn’t popular, probably as it defies popular taste must-haves (romance with older women, poetic conversations and English class sessions), but I liked the idea of putting the two side-by-side to see which one affects people more.

A picture creates a thousand interpretations through different eyes, but don’t these interpretations leave out the real message?
Don’t you always need to put a name on the picture to huddle the rambling minds?
But a paragraph wears off readers’ attention, in this fast-moving ethics-eating media era we are living in!

I’m neither a professional photographer nor a prolific writer.
But I’m curious to know what you feel.

Let me invite you to join an experiment.
It’s easy – let me know (leave a comment or fill the poll) which captures your heart best:

   (a)

The Hopefuls

(b)

The Hopefuls

The red trumpet buds peep shyly before my eyes. Not from below the abundant earth, not from under the rich soil. They greet me from top of a grey, arid bed of sand, where they trust their lives upon. Neat rows of rubber tubes, presumably as youthful, line intact with the baby flowers and the green leaves, feeding their hope with artificial freshwater. In this land of the gulf, the source of life is not only promised, it is created.

(c)

The Hopefuls

The red trumpet buds peep shyly before my eyes. Not from below the abundant earth, not from under the rich soil. They greet me from top of a grey, arid bed of sand, where they trust their lives upon. Neat rows of rubber tubes, presumably as youthful, line intact with the baby flowers and the green leaves, feeding their hope with artificial freshwater. In this land of the gulf, the source of life is not only promised, it is created.