Ignorance is bliss, as long as you don't know about it.

I was talking with my friend Rich about my last post. Rich is a great photographer and a snide little bastard (but his criticisms of my photos are usually constructive, after being snide). I was saying that I especially liked the photo of the kid, and he commented that it seemed a bit out of focus to him. Then he offered the rule of thumb that the a person's eyes are what should be in focus. Presumably I had focused on the kid's torso because that was simply easier.

But after boasting in the caption that I 'quite liked' the photo I felt a bit stupid. I even thought about altering or deleting the post. And so, like almost every other thought I've ever had, this provoked a day dream. Why did Rich's comment change the way I felt about the photo so much? The more I thought about it, I realized the reason: ignorance may be bliss, but blissfully ignorant people look like assholes to people who know better. And I realized that I just made myself into into that asshole - someone who was pleased as puddin' with his shitty photo, with no idea that it violated a pretty basic principle of how to take a good photo.

But I thought about this more. Some people hold a particular belief or emotion simply because they don't know any better. This has always been a demographic that I hate. Some people defend blissful ignorance, of course - if the photo makes you happy, why do you need to know that it sucks? Mine is not really a happy attitude - though I obviously don't expect to be the best at everything, I try not to boast too much about my inevitable mediocrity. And when I get caught in a slip-up, a moment of actually not understanding what "good"is, I get flustered. Others are more easily pleased. I think this dichotomy of attitudes toward life may, at least partly, explain why people feel so strongly one way or the other about Sarah Palin, for example. So perhaps my out-of-focus photo is a metaphor for Life In America. And maybe that's how I always meant it.

So I found two more portraits that I've always liked. Both are of Jed. The first one violates my rule a bit of what qualifies as a 'people picture', since it is a skiing photo, but its close enough. It was taken skiing back from what we thought would be the first peak ascent of Nenana Mountain. It wasn't. It was, however, every bit as cold as it looks. The photo was taken during a brief lull in the bitterly cold wind. The second photo was from a time period in which I was pretty much Jed's only friend (the title of the .jpeg, from when I scanned the photo years back, is jedbeingjed.) He was probably about 19 and this was around the time he got booted off the UAF ski team. He got booted, basically, for being the person in this photo. I don't remember why I took this picture - it is a bit out of character of the types of photos that I take - but I think I was just finishing the roll of film and this moment seemed to be worth capturing, even at the time. If I outlive him, I'll see that this photo is at his wake.