Day 237. I'm wearing my bad idea jeans

In high school I had this friend, Duffy.  He was notorious for his bad ideas.  He would climb into a dryer and tells us to turn it on, he made his own napalm, ect... The stories could go on and on, but the best bad idea I remember he had was when we built a huge bonfire in another friend's backyard consisting of a telephone poll we brought down and sawed through-it was a HUGE fire.  So this night, Duffy gets the idea that he is going to jump across the fire. Yah, of course.  It was toward the end of summer, beginning of fall, we had all been drinking and other stuff.  He was wearing these tattered old blue jeans (you know, the kinds that are all ripped up on the bottom.) So after he didn't clear the jump across, fell in and caught somewhat on fire, he got out, put himself out and said, "yup I was wearing my bad idea jeans."

It is with this spirit that I have launched into my newest project

I've always loved breaking the rules, so when my mom told me don't stare into the sun, you'll go blind I would secretly take sneak peaks just to see if I would go blind.  Then I got a camera and was told, don't aim at the sun, it could damage the camera.  So of course one of my favorite "shots" is aiming at the sun, it lends such a sentimental kind of nostalgia to any subject.

I am not only a rule breaker but a photoshop whore where I shamelessly throw on filters to my images, use blending effects and the like.  But lately I am fascinated with the lens flare render.  It is so easy to bring out that sentiment, sometimes it looks very fake, but you can ease it in and it actually looks natural.  But that is not what I am trying to do with this new project.

In these so obvious lens flare photos, I want to see if I can affect the viewer's eyes in that born to be bad way- could I make a viewer go blind?  Could I mesmerize the viewer with such obvious fakery?