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Me

Me

Muncie, Indiana

Okay, this is obviously not a very recent picture of me. It was taken many years ago by a professional photographer here in Muncie by the name of Ruth Chin, who also photographed my parents' wedding. I don't know much about film photography, but the negatives she used were from film that was much larger than 35mm, allowing her to do a lot of cropping, while still maintaining an enormous amount of detail. In this picture, she had my mother hold my hand, and gave my mother the option of choosing a print of me and her together or just of me (by cropping the left side of the print). My mother opted for the closeup of me, and until a few years ago, that was all we had in the family photos.

What was interesting was that soon after the picture was made, Mrs. Chin made a print cropped to show me and my mother's arm, just like the image above. According to my mother, that picture hung in the the window of the photographic studio for many years (along with other pictures taken there).

Some years back I was working on assembling a comprehensive album of all our family photos from the first few years since my parents' wedding. I made an appointment to see Mrs. Chin and get prints made of whatever she had of my family. Amazingly, she remembered me, probably because of this one picture she had taken so many years ago.

She told me that what had really struck her about the image was that when it was cropped that way, anyone looking at it could clearly see that the arm belonged to the mother. I must admit that I really can't see what makes this picture so special, but I probably can't be objective, seeing as how I am the subject of it. But it did make an impression on me that the professional photographer who had taken it was so proud of it. I therefore asked Mrs. Chin to make me a print of it exactly like the one she had made for her window.

I'd be interested to hear what other people's impressions are of this photo. The only thing that really strikes me is my haircut. It seems my mother was trying to make my head look like a bowling ball.

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