It is said- a picture is worth a thousand words. Often, when words fall short for describing an emotion, a picture conveys it aptly. The thousand words that a picture speaks can be a story- story of a person or story of a place or a combination of narratives of the person and the place- anything. Hence, The People Place Project came up with a photo contest for the next book- People Called Shillong. All the people in a city have their own thoughts and perceptions about their surroundings and have their own stories but not all stories can be described in words; hence, this photo contest aims at unveiling Shillong through pictures, portraying a different story. To reach out to almost everybody, PPP collaborated with ‘The Northeast Today’ for the contest. An open call for photographs was given. Photographs- that portray a story, that tell us about the ‘Real Shillong’ through its people and places. The themes that could be followed for the contest were- street photography, people photography and architectural/urban photography. There was no limitation for the entries since we wanted to collect as many different dimensions and photos as we could. The selected photos will be published in the upcoming ‘People Called Shillong’ and its coffee table version. A single picture has the ability to bring up various angles, dimensions and perspectives to look at something or someone. A picture can stir up thoughts to actually sit and ponder over. It can take us through a journey of thoughts and emotions, it gives us an opportunity of imagination; imagining what is it that a picture is conveying, what is being subtly said, what is it that is intangible yet very obvious about the picture. Shillong being a beautiful city with lots of unexplored aspects gives that opportunity and it was our job to seek it. We got a lot of beautiful candid shots, beautiful pictures in the entries and each picture whether selected or not opened up a new window for us to look at Shillong.