Pictures vs. Words

So, everyone knows that a picture is worth a thousand words, or so the saying goes at any rate. I suppose that's true in many ways---particularly when it comes to things that aren't central to the focus of a scene. For instance, in a picture of a person standing in front of some monument, you can see all the people milling around them, which nobody is usually interested in. To describe all of these people in words would take forever and waste the time of everyone involved, but in a picture they're easily accessible for anyone who for some reason is interested in them.

There are some things, however, that cannot be captured in a picture. I discovered this when visiting St. Chappelle in Paris. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's an old royal chapel covered in huge stained glass windows located right near Notre Dame , and one of the most beautiful churches in Europe.

I had the good fortune to visit it at sunset, which meant that the sun was pouring directly in through the western windows of the chapel, causing them to glow almost as if they were producing the light themselves, and casting rainbow-like projections of them on the stone wall opposite.

No picture can reproduce this effect. I tried about ten thousand different ways with my camera while I was there, and so far searching the internet hasn't yielded results either. None of them even come close to reproducing that glow. The only things that can approximate it are my old, oft maligned words. Good news, I think, since I'm trusting my career and dedicating my life to that medium.