I was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. I have a wonderful family: my wife, Janet, a famous horticulturist; son Kyle, a fantastic chef; daughter Katie, a child care worker for children with special needs; and her husband, Benjamin, who works for UAMS, is a great problem-solver and is a great help to me.
And, of course, their son, Christian Ryan Muller—the center of our universe.
I learned photography in high school alongside my best friends, Barry Arthur and Alex Brandon. My first newspaper job was as a stringer for the Arkansas Gazette, and I soon joined the staff of the Arkansas Democrat. What a wonderful job it was. From a front-row seat, I witnessed and documented the history of Arkansas, photographing an extraordinary range of people, places, and events.
Unfortunately, all but a few of those images are now gone. I am sure they look better in my memory than they did in fact.
We started inventing the process of digitizing photographs. We would still process film, but then scan it into a computer for editing and output. Easy today but back in the 1980s it resembled magic. The process was slow and tedious but it got better. This was important because it was the biggest hurdle to pagination, total page layout with computers.
In 1991, I moved into information technology. Over the years, we developed and installed more systems than I could possibly list.
I was blessed to work with my best friends. Barry now works for our parent company, WEHCO Media, where he helps coordinate and solve problems across its digital presence. Alex went on to several positions before becoming a staff photographer in Washington, D.C., covering the White House. Someday, I hope to write a more detailed account of their accomplishments; it will be good reading.
Years later, in the digital era, I returned to photography by covering mainly sports—my favorite subject. I went to a lot of Razorback football games, which was considered the choice assignment but I found that High School sports was much more rewarding, the opposite of how I felt early in my career. I also love UALR basketball. I had great access to the team, went to most of their home games and traveled to the Sun Belt tournament.
After 42 years at the newspaper, I retired. A friend reminded me of my love for film photography, and that is where my attention has returned.
My favorite subject, of course, is Christian. He is now two years old, and I have more than 3,000 photographs of him that survived my first round of editing. Among those are a few I think are genuinely good—and many others I simply enjoy. You will see some of them here.
Enjoy!