Exposure Time
Have you ever wondered why people did not smile in old photos? The simplest explanation could be exposure time, the amount of light a camera needs to record an image. The longer the shutter can be kept open, the longer the film is exposed to light. So in early cameras as the film took longer along with the camera, It was easier to hold a serious expression than a smile. A picture in 1838 by Louise Daguerre is blurry because it probably took 10-15 minutes to take. Everyone presumably moved in the picture. So as people didn’t know when it would click, they got bored of posing. But thanks to technology, pictures are now taken quickly.
Perspective
Another aspect to look at why people seemed so serious in old photos would be from people’s perspective of a portrait back then. Before photos, portraits were painted. That was time-consuming and this perhaps made the occasion serious and that mentality got carried to the early photographs. Mark Twain, a professional humorist once said, ‘there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever’. His viewpoint was typical. Take, for example, the oddly popular practice of posing dead bodies for ‘lifelike portraits’. The photos were not mere snapshots they were a passage of immortality. If we look at some of the exceptions, it’s easier to understand why portraits were so grim. There are many smiling faces of Victorians, stashed in photo collections. Victorians were not usually miserable but when it was time to take photos, they got serious. When photography improved, the norms changed and smiles returned.
Transcripted By Benazir Elahee Munni