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Thursday, September 20, 2007
Up for sharing your childhood school photo?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
My son’s school photo this year will be a keeper.
Picture day at South Gwinnett High School — by luck or by design — fell on a Wednesday. On every Wednesday of a football game week, South Gwinnett’s marching band members, football players, cheerleaders and others involved in school activities wear “dress clothes” to school.
As my youngest adjusted his tie that morning, I sent up a silent praise for dress-up day.
The reality, however, is that all school photos are keepers — at least to me. I have never been able to resist an “8-by-10-two-5-by-7s-two-3-by-5s-eight-wallets” package.
Even the year my daughter took a pair of Fiskars school scissors to her bangs, leaving voluminous gaps that had to be leveled into a microscopic fringe. Even during years of strained expressions, missing teeth, braces and cowlicks.
I come by this honestly. My mom has guarded her entire collection, displaying my sisters’ and my stair-step progressions on her hall wall — in view of any potential blackmailer.
One of the most legendary is my fourth-grade portrait, for which I decided to “roll” my hair. Never mind that I had never rolled my hair before. Never mind that my mother suggested I not. The big pink sponge rollers awaited, and I wanted to be “pretty.”
The result was akin to a head-banded version of “The Flying Nun.”
I imagine most adults can think back to at least one school photo that turned out - shall we say - less attractive than they had hoped.
Yet - at least in the days before elementary schools had yearbooks — we would cut out the smallest ones, write our names on the back and swap them with classmates. Families sent bigger photos to relatives and safeguarded the rest.
Bryn-Alan Photography, which takes more than a million school photos annually and handled South Gwinnett’s this year, has been in school photography since the 1920s.
A lot has changed. Black and white has gone to color. Digital photography has improved the process. More photos are “retouched.” Background choices have increased. And in some areas, students can even be photographed with their pets, said Bryn-Alan President Harvey Parido, recalling one in Florida who brought in an owl and an alligator for photographs (not together, thank goodness).
But parents still prefer the classic poses, Parido said.
I agree. Those time-honored, simple photos say it all, not only through expressions, but through hairstyles and fashions that can date a photo with amazing accuracy. Or transport you back to a time and friends you keep tucked far, far away.
Parido said among the millions of youngsters his company has photographed have been early actors, politicians, prominent athletes or others later noted for high achievements.
“You never know what that child might grow up to be some day,” he said.
I asked some of Gwinnett’s leaders if they would share a childhood photo for this column.
A handful of brave ones with hearty senses of humor handed them over.
It was almost like swapping class photos again. (Check them — and my fourth-grade beauty — out here.)
What was your worst childhood school photo? Would you let anyone see it?
(Have a legendary school photo of your own? Click here to share it on ajc.com.)
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