That looks like a toke of one eighth.
possibly I think I had forgotten the iso of those dark times
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It is just a fashion thing that become a (stupid) trope. Now many belief people MUST smile in a picture even when most smiles in photo’s look artificial if not a rictus.
The best acting and modelling advice is not to act. Just. Don’t. Act. If your smile is natural you will smile, if it isn’t you shouldn’t and won’t.
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A lot of the early portrait photos show people with a somewhat glassy eyed look - and that was again due to the slow shutter speeds and the inevitable blinking. The eyes were double exposed with the eye lids.
And when a large group (like a school) would get their photo taken outside there was invariably some wag who knew enough about the exposure time so they could start on one end of the crowd and then when the exposure started they would stand still for a moment and then run behind to the other side and stand there - appearing in the same shot twice. Tons of fun.
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I saw that photo set on imgur many moons ago.
I don’t know if it’s real, but if so it’s very sweet.
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did anyone think that possibly they did not want to show their teeth because they were crooked that they did not have good dentistry back then and no fluoride in their toothpaste so they probably had dental caries as well in some cases
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Theodore and Gunhild in the second picture were Brand New Immigrants from Norway. That is my Grandmother in their arms.
Nellie at the top is my dads mom. That side of the family I can trace back to the east coast in the late 1700s. Granted Dads side of the family were potato farmers in South Dakota so they did not have an easy life but I would suspect part of is is due to more American History then Moms side.
Or Nellie was just a fun lover And Theodore was as Dour as the Scandinavian stereotype implies
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I doubt it. That would be assuming they could somehow envision a future of fluoride and braces resulting in the straight white teeth people flash in modern photos. Crooked and discoloured teeth were just teeth back then.
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I thought it might be a dentistry thing, like pre-fluoridation everyone had nasty rotten teeth.
I’d look like that, too, if I just caught a trout that big! 
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I’ve heard (from a Russian) that the reason they don’t smile was because smiling means you’re trying to influence or get one over on them (con-man smile). But that’s more for greeting someone vs. in a photograph.
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Times have changed I guess.
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Actually, not everyone had bad teeth, because people ate less sugary and in some cases, some had natural floridated water. Also, there wasn’t a mass media that told us that only perfectly white, straight teeth were the norm, and if you don’t have that, you should pay thousands of dollars to get them fixed. What dentistry did exist was focused on things like pulling bad teeth, rather than cosmetic procedures.
And no cared, really…
this is about the medieval period, but I think this probably holds true into the 19th century, especially outside of cities. I do think that dental problems went way up once our diets became more artificial in nature (more sugar and salt in our foods):
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He’s got new chompers now…
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People always bring up exposure times, but the real reason people look unhappy in old photos is because they are all still thinking about how they lost Clementine and how dreadful sorry they still are about the whole situation.
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you beat me to it 
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Look at the roof in the second photo. I’d be off my game too.
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People ate with their ring finger, pinky, and thumb so that their hand would hide their poor oral hygiene.
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