The Photo is Sometimes Best Not Admitted

I had a trial the other day.  Midway through, I had some pictures that I wanted to put into evidence.  In the jury's presence, the prosecutor objected on relevance grounds, and we had a little debate about admissibility right in front of the jury.  The debate turned into a lengthy bench conference, and the bench conference turned into an argument and proffer outside the jury's presence.

Then the photos were deemed admissible.  In retrospect, I bet the pictures would have helped me far more had they been excluded.  Then, the jury would have been left to imagine just how bad they were and upset that the State didn't want them to see the light of day.

With their admission, they were what the were -- worth a thousand words, true.  But the photo in the mind's imaginative eye, how many words would it have been worth?