For close to thirty years, Hazy Memories Photography Ltd had been contracted to take the annual student portraits for almost every school in the Montgomery County School District. Oh sure, every so often another studio might underbid them, but parents always insist on returning to Hazy Memories before long. No other studio prodcued the same great images; smiles were never as bright nor cheeks as rosy when other studios got the contract. A teacher once asked the photographer on duty what the secret was to those great pictures; he just laughed and said that Hazy Memories used “special” cameras that “liked children.” That was true enough. But what he didn’t tell her was that occasionally — so rarely that it’s hardly even worth mentioning — there were kids that the camera, what whatever reason, didn’t like. When that happened, parents received an apology in the mail — the negatives were lost or the film was overexposed or something went wrong and could you bring in your child for a resitting? The not-so-special replacement photos were never quite as good, but they were certainly always better than the photos that parents would never see.

A short little story about Nate and Becky from Guttersnipe (www.guttersnipecomic.com) on school picture day.