focus, or out of focus, where blurring means it's better, and a gaussian blur is the photoshoppers best friend, that the lack of clarity, the increased entropy in a photograph is desirable, wanted, needed even for artistic sake, but less about the unfocused background, and more about the focused foreground, and it's the not the softening the the contrast with the hardening that makes it artistic, that draws the eye, that the eye draws