Facial expressions in photos

After a while of looking through my photos over the years I realised that there wasn’t as many photos where I looked happy and I was smiling in the photos.

I started to think about why I wasn’t smiling in many photos and I tried to think about what was going on at the time or how I was feeling at when the photo was taken. In some of the photos I was even pouting or making a duck face.
I’m not ashamed to admit I have done the dreaded duckface, though it was becoming more popular a few years ago over smiling so I caved into social pressure at the time.

I did a little research into this change in expressions in portrait photography or selfies and this was mainly based on what was popular at the time, such as celebrities and models expressions in their photos.
One example is that the pouting face was made popular by celebrities such as Victoria Beckham and Tyra Banks because it was thought to make them look slimmer and more alluring in magazines and advertisements.

I also found an article online relating to this topic, below is a segment from the article.

Professor Jones, who specialises in facial expressions, said ‘the smile had carried on triumphant’ for most of the 20th century thanks to advertising, studio photography and dentistry.

But following the rise of the selfie, people began to realise broad smiles were ‘absolutely everywhere’ and changed how they reacted to the camera lens.

Thank you for reading, and hope you are all having a good day.

Remember to smile !!! And don’t take so many photos making the same pouting face like I do haha :)