Why did people not smile in old photographs?

 

Did you ever notice in older photos that nobody smiles?

It wasn’t because they were unhappy or grumpy, it was the process of having your photograph taken that dictated that it was not best to smile.

Older cameras required manual exposures and lots of light because there was no flash and exposures of photographs would take several minutes to hours.

Therefore the subject of the photo would have to hold the pose perfectly still for an uncomfortable amount of time, sometimes for up to 30 minutes.

Mark Twain once wrote, “A photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever.”