Why Did People Not Smile In Old Photos
Camila Farah

Experts point out however that much shorter exposure times came about long before smiles became common in photos suggesting that technology may not have been a primary factor either.
No wonder people in old photos look so serious. Some believe people simply couldn t hold a smile for that long so they instead chose a more sober expression that they could maintain for a longer time. As people asking google this question have accurately observed smiles are grimly absent from early photographs. A man having his shoes shined and the shoeshine.
By the 1840s exposure times bobbed around 10 to 60 seconds making personal photos much. First off jeeves dismisses the notion that people of old refused to smile because their teeth were rotting. While these explanations may play a part the main reason why people didn t smile in old photos had more to do with culture and customs of old paintings and portraiture than it did with poor technology. Portraiture was at the heart of photography s appeal from its very invention.
Another common explanation for the lack of smiles in 19th century photographs is that because it took so long to capture a photograph back then people in pictures couldn t hold a smile for long. From pbs i believe it was ken burns who commented in an interview on the civil war that it was considered quite rude in that time period to smile for a photograph and it took such a long time to. It wasn t that people didn t have bad teeth as dental hygiene really was awful but. 1 very early technology made it harder to capture smiles one common explanation for the lack of smiles in old photos is that long exposure times the time a camera needs to take a picture made.
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They needed to gaze blankly in order for the image to work.Source : pinterest.com