My arithmetic skills suffered at 13

If a picture paints a thousand words, does a picture of a picture paint 2000 words, and a picture of 3 pictures make 4000? Or is there some algebra involved to make it more? Is it squared to make it a million and a quadrillion words, respectively? Or does composition play into the equation? In which case it would be like 1500 and 423,676 words. Can a photorapher determine how many words his pictures paint? Maybe I should start shooting pictures and charge by the word.

Plus, if you did a web search of the first two sentences of this post in their entirety, how many hits would there be? How many people in the history of life (well, at least since pictures have existed, and the cliche about them being 1000 words) have asked the exact same question which I just posed? I bet at least 6 or 7.

Update: 92 hits, and I'm still not sure how many have asked the same thing yet.

Help me out, guys. It's Friday.