Blur photos are good.

If you have pimples or wrinkles or moles or rough skin or any annoying facial flaw at all, they’re instantly eradicated by the power of blurness.

When I started modelling a long time ago, soft focus photos were quite popular, and I loved them because they made my teenage pimples disappear.

Here’s a comparison for those who don’t know what soft focus means.

What a normal photo looks like.

What a soft focus photo looks like.

See, instant baby skin.

I created that soft look in photoshop, but they used to do it manually — put vaseline on the camera lens or something like that.

But soft focus went out of fashion after advertisers/directors decided that they were sick of being cheated by phony photos. They would get all excited when they saw a beautiful face on a photograph and would ask to see the face in person. Then the real person would come to their office and give them a heart attack.

I think I must have contributed to many a heart attack back then, when I showed up at many an office with my oily teenage face, looking nothing like my soft focus photos.

Nowadays, media people have learnt not to be fooled by photographs. Especially now that anyone can digitally retouch and print their own photos easily.

But that is not to say that people don’t use soft focus anymore. They still do, especially in bridal photography. That’s why all brides have perfect skin. In their wedding pictures.

Well, I am now going to set a new trend in photography.

It’s called the Phone Camera Night Blur Effect.

You can create this effect successfully by using a handphone with a lousy built-in camera, such as the NEC 6ooi. And only take photos at night.

This effect gives the same result as the soft focus, just more artistic. I think.

See, Rena and I both have such great skin.

If you feel that your pimples still can be seen, try taking the photo in a very dark room.

There, you can hardly see anything, but you can still recognise yourself. Can’t you?

That’s the main thing. The second photo may be very blur, but I can still see myself and Elyxia in it, which will serve to remind me that I was at Indochine Forbidden City on New Year’s Day 2006 with my friends.

This will bring back such fond memories, minus the pimples, which is always good.

If you have more than just pimples, like maybe you have a tree branch growing out of your left cheek, try shaking the phone while you’re taking the picture (at night, in a dark room, remember).

When people see the photo, I’m sure they’ll mistake the tree branch for your boyfriend’s arm. (If your boyfriend is too fat to resemble a tree branch, get a very skinny child to stand beside you in the photo.)

If all else fails, turn off the lights and light up some red lanterns.

It is said that red lighting makes one look more radiant and glamorous. That’s why they use red lights at, uh, at places where they use red lights.

But never mind that.

Now that I have started this new photography trend, you will probably see more Phone Camera Night Blur Effect photos in my blog from now.

Okay?