I once bought a lens for a camera I did not know how to use. I bought the lens because I saw a photo on a website. The photo showed a leaf. The leaf had water on it. The water looked like glass. You could see the veins in the leaf. The veins looked like a map.
I thought the lens would make my life look like that map. I paid 1,134 dollars for the lens. I put the lens on my camera. I took a photo of a leaf in my yard. The leaf was brown. The leaf was dry. The photo was not sharp. The photo was a mistake.
$1,134
The financial premium paid for a promised clarity that reality could not sustain.
I realized the photo on the website was not a photo of a leaf. The photo was a photo of what the lens wanted the leaf to be. I kept the lens in a box for . I never used the lens again. I wasted the money because I believed a sharp image was a true image.
The Interpreter’s Blur
I work as a court interpreter. My name is Oscar G. I stand next to people who are in trouble. I listen to what the people say. I say the words in a different language. I do not add words. I do not take words away.
If a man says he is “kind of” sure he saw a car, I must say he is “kind of” sure. I cannot say he is sure. The “kind of” is the blur in his memory. The blur is the truth of his mind. If I make his statement sharp, I am lying to the court. I am creating a fiction.
We do this with photos now. We think a sharp photo is a better photo. We think a sharp photo tells more of the story. A sharp photo often tells a story that did not happen.
The Hallway on 4th Street
Diego is a real estate agent. Diego has a listing for an apartment on 4th Street. The apartment is old. The hallway in the apartment is dim. The hallway has paint that is peeling. Diego takes a photo of the hallway with his phone. The photo is dark. The photo is blurry.
Diego looks at the photo. Diego does not like the photo. Diego uses a tool to fix the photo. Diego upscales the photo. The tool adds pixels. The tool adds light. The tool makes the edges of the walls straight.
“The hallway is dark. The hallway is dark. The hallway is small.”
“The light in the photo looks warm. The edges are straight.”
The paint no longer looks like it is peeling. The paint looks like it is textured. The light in the photo looks warm. The light looks like the sun is hitting the floor. The sun does not hit the floor in that hallway. The hallway faces a brick wall.
Diego puts the photo on the internet. A couple sees the photo. The couple likes the warm light. The couple likes the textured paint. The couple goes to the open house. The couple stands in the hallway.
The woman squints. The man turns on the light on his phone. The hallway is small. The hallway is dark. The hallway is not the hallway from the internet. The woman asks Diego why the hallway feels different.
Diego says the camera sees things differently. Diego is wrong. The camera saw the hallway. The software changed the hallway. The sharp photo lied.
We live in a time where we fix everything. We fix the skin on our faces. We fix the color of the sky. We fix the resolution of our memories. We use a
to make a low-resolution image look like a 4K image.
The tool is very fast. The tool takes or . The tool reconstructs the detail. This is a powerful thing. It is useful for a designer who needs a large print. It is useful for a person who has an old photo of a grandmother.
But when we use the tool to change the present, we create a debt. Reality must eventually pay that debt. Reality is the person who shows up to the apartment and finds the dark hallway. Reality is the person who looks in the mirror after looking at a filtered screen.
The pixel is a square. A square is a simple thing. When a photo is low-resolution, the squares are big. You see the squares. You know you are looking at a representation. You know the image is limited. The blur is an honest admission of a limit.
When we upscale the image, we hide the limit. We fill in the squares with new squares. The new squares are smaller. The new squares create a mask. The mask is very beautiful. The mask is very persuasive.
The Resolution of the Human Soul
I have updated software on my computer that I never use. I updated the software because the notification told me to. The notification said the software would be faster. The notification said the software would be better.
I do not use the software. I do not need the software to be faster. I like things that are slow. I like the way a person speaks when they are trying to find the right word. That pause is important. That pause is the resolution of the human soul.
When we remove the pause, we lose the person. When we remove the blur, we lose the context. The couple left the apartment on 4th Street. They did not buy the apartment. They felt like they had been tricked.
They were not tricked by Diego. They were tricked by the expectation of sharpness. If the photo had been blurry, they might have expected an old hallway. They might have liked the old hallway for what it was.
They might have seen the potential in the peeling paint. Because the photo was sharp, they expected perfection. Perfection is a heavy weight for an old building to carry. Perfection is a heavy weight for anything to carry.
We are building a world where things must compete with their enhanced selves. A product on a screen is perfect. The product in the box is just a product. The product in the box has a scratch. The product in the box has a dull finish.
The product on the screen has been upscaled. The edges are crisp. The colors are vibrant. The product on the screen is an advertisement for a reality that does not exist. We are teaching our eyes to reject the world.
We are teaching our eyes to look for the 4K version of the trees. We are teaching our eyes to look for the high-definition version of our friends.
The Memory Replacement
I remember a case in court. A witness was describing a man. The witness said the man was tall. The witness said the man had a hat. The lawyer asked the witness if the man had a beard. The witness paused.
“Yes, he had a beard.”
– Courtroom Witness
The lawyer showed the witness a photo. The photo was a high-resolution security image. The man in the photo had a beard. The witness looked at the photo. The witness did not remember the beard. The witness accepted the sharpness of the photo as a replacement for her own memory.
The photo was a better witness than the woman. But the woman was the one who was there. The software we use is very good. AI Photo Master can take a small image and make it large. It can take a blurry edge and make it sharp.
This is a miracle of math. It is a miracle of 2,140 lines of code working at once. It helps the small business owner. It helps the photographer who missed the focus by a fraction of an inch. There is a place for this.
The 1:1 Life
The hallway on 4th Street is still dark. The paint is still peeling. The apartment is still there. It is a good apartment. It has a roof that does not leak. It has windows that face the east.
If you stand in the kitchen at , you can see the light on the stove. This is a real thing. It is not a 4K thing. It is a 1:1 thing. It is a thing that happens in time.
A photo cannot capture the way the air smells in that kitchen. A photo cannot capture the sound of the floorboards. When we make the photo too sharp, we stop looking for the smell and the sound. We only look for the pixels.
I am an interpreter. I translate the blur. I keep the “kind of” and the “maybe.” I keep the hesitation. I do so because the hesitation is where the truth lives. If we make everything sharp, we will stop being able to see the things that are right in front of us.
We will be waiting for the world to upscale itself. We will be waiting for the sun to hit the floor in a hallway that faces a brick wall. I think about the lens I bought for 1,134 dollars. I think about the leaf.
The leaf was not the map. The map was a lie. I like my yard now. I like the way the yard looks when it rains. The rain makes the yard look gray. The gray is not sharp. The gray is not high-resolution.
The gray is just the weather. I do not need to upscale the weather. I do not need to fix the sky. I just need to stand in the yard and see the leaf for what it is. It is a brown leaf. It is a dry leaf. It is enough.