A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS… I’m sure you know that. But it doesn’t account for inflation.

The following accounts will show you that a thousand words is chump change in relation to what a camera can can achieve. Perhaps more so than ever before, your camera happens to be one of the most potent of communication tools.

If you think I’m exaggerating or being melodramatic, then you probably haven’t seen the movie Born Into Brothels. In this documentary film set in in India, professional photographer Zana Briski changes the lives of the local children. These are not just ordinary kids. They are the children of prostitutes.

A documentary photographer, Briski originally went to Calcutta to photograph prostitutes. She ended up befriending their children and teaching them photography as thanks for photographing the mothers.

Much of the children’s work was exhibited and used in the film. One boy was sent to a photography conference in Amsterdam.

Briski and fellow filmmaker, co-director Ross Kauffman succeeded in not only making an award-winning film but, more importantly, raising worldwide awareness to the conditions these children live in.

The film’s higher purposes live on in the work of Kids With Cameras — “a non-profit organisation that teaches the art of photography to marginalised children in communities around the world. We use photography to capture the imaginations of children, to empower them, building confidence, self-esteem and hope. We share their vision and voices with the world through exhibitions, books, websites and film. By linking with local organizations, we work to strengthen the children’s education and general well-being, providing financial support through sales of their prints or by developing our own homes with a focus on leadership and the arts.”

Interested? Take a quick tour of Zana Briski’s website.

Another outstanding example of the power of the camera is a shot depicting the effects of famine in Africa taken by photographer Kevin Carter in 1994. In this image, the tragic plight of an emaciated, starving Sudanese child is made all the more emphatic by the menacing spectre of a vulture waiting patiently, metres distant in the background. The United Nations food camp was just a kilometre from the scene.

This photo won a Pulitzer Prize and a shocked, but suddenly more aware world responded with donations, volunteer aid, and organisations geared themselves quickly to address the starvation problem in Africa.

In the words of Kevin Carter: “I was appalled at what they were doing. I was appalled at what I was doing. But then people started talking about those pictures… then I felt that maybe my actions hadn’t been at all bad. Being a witness to something this horrible wasn’t necessarily such a bad thing to do.”

In both the cases I’ve cited above, the photographers suffered heavy criticism. In the end, the work charted its own course and achieved profound, far-reaching, positive results.

Such is the power of a good image.

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