r/pics • u/not__a_username • Aug 22 '24
A smiling photo of a Chinese man with his rice, taken during an era, were, smiling was... rare
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u/ikantolol Aug 22 '24
Smiling isn't rare in that era, it's just that early camera need a very long time to take a single picture, somewhere between 5-30 minutes
imagine holding a smile that long.
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u/GreenStrong Aug 22 '24
This photo was first published in 1907. In 1900, the Kodak Brownie was introduced, it enabled handheld photos without any extreme stillness, in bright sunlight. This would have been done in a studio with a big north facing window, to use the softer light of the open sky. That would require a slower shutter to capture more light, but still less than a second. They didn't really have quantitively measurement of film speed at this time, but the film is generally agreed to be something around ASA 12. The ISO scale is approximately the same as ASA, for this kind of comparision.
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u/Fabulous_Bumblebee Aug 22 '24
Most people have this odd misconception about photography prior to around 1930 where they think everything was big box plate cameras with long photo times.
Meanwhile I have foldable pocket camera on my shelf that isn’t much bigger than a modern smartphone from around 1912-ish. Mine isn’t in working condition, but the model has multiple exposure settings and would have taken well under a second in good lighting. Cameras have been “good” for way longer than people think.
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u/GreenStrong Aug 22 '24
True. But this would have probably been taken on a rather large camera with a glass plate, and a max aperture around f/8. That was standard for portraits at the time, at least in the US. You can tell it is large format because it is tack sharp and highly detailed.
r/GlassNegativeEra has a lot of examples
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u/Fabulous_Bumblebee Aug 22 '24
Oh, definitely. This isn’t a pocket or handheld camera. It just bugs me whenever this pic makes the rounds and half of the comments are talking about how he would have had to hold that pose for upwards of a minute or even several.
Thanks for the sub recommendation! Cool stuff.
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u/Abbot_of_Cucany Aug 22 '24
If we assume an F/16 lens and bright sunlight, that would work out to an exposure of under 1/10 second. Not fast enough for sports photography, but short enough that people wouldn't have had to hold a pose.
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u/IMSOGIRL Aug 22 '24
Nah OP is right, smiling wasn't invented until 1909 by Charles Smiling. That's why photos back then had people frowning- they just didn't have the technology to smile back then and wanted to show off their frown, invented by Mansell Frown in 1850.
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u/EllisDee3 Aug 22 '24
Europeans always try to grab credit.
It was invented by the man in the original picture. His name was Smi Ling, and he was a hero.
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u/nathanforyouseason5 Aug 22 '24
He only did the smile for this photo but didn’t do anything much with it. Charles Smiling popularized it into photo culture before introducing it to other media forms.
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u/EllisDee3 Aug 22 '24
Smi Ling died in poverty. Survived by his bitter wife, Scow Ling.
Charles Smiling is the Thomas Edison of facial expressions.
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u/lolas_coffee Aug 22 '24
Depends. Smiling was invented around 1615, but it didn't become popular until Tom Brady and the Patriots beat the Rams in the Super Bowl to end the 2001 NFL Season.
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u/throwawaydisposable Aug 24 '24
IIRC there was also the issue that photography was rare and so it was usually a super serious thing to get your photograph taken, but, this dude was under the impression these were low stakes goofy photos and so he had fun with it
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u/zerbey Aug 22 '24
Smiling wasn't rare at all, they weren't joyless people back then, they laughed and joked like every human has since humans have existed. Cameras just took a really long time to take pictures, holding a smile wouldn't be very comfortable so they rarely did.
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u/red5711 Aug 22 '24
Not only that, but for most people getting their photo taken was an important once-in-a-lifetime event and many saw smiling as not taking it seriously.
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u/So_be Aug 22 '24
This picture is not 'shopped or AI, I was suspicious and checked. Its just that this version of the photograph is dog shit and makes it look fake.
This is a link to the photo's page at the American Museum of Natural History proving the photo's provenance and with a much better example of it.
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u/Ben_Thar Aug 22 '24
Y’know, supposedly there’s some guy in Texas who smiled one time while he was getting his picture taken.
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u/yugosaki Aug 22 '24
Smiling wasnt rare, smiling in photos was rare cause it was hard to hold that pose for the long exposure times.
Thats the reason victorians always looked so stern in photos. Imagine holding a pose completely still for several minutes.
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u/lolas_coffee Aug 22 '24
Imagine holding a pose completely still for several minutes.
Dude, all of us are doing that now for hours every day on Reddit.
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u/pandaeye0 Aug 22 '24
As a chinese, I have to admit that this is the first time I see man smiling in photos this old.
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u/gregarioussparrow Aug 22 '24
They has a whole bit about this in A Million Ways to Die in the West. Was great.
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u/Saintbaba Aug 22 '24
This is my favorite photo in the entire history of photographs - no, literally, it is the lock screen on my phone.
I'm an asian american who loves rice as much as this guy apparently does, and this picture of a dude loving life, loving rice, having a blast getting his picture taken, gives me a little spark of joy every time i look at it or think about it.
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u/Le__artiste Aug 22 '24
you know what's rare? Seeing a picture in r/pics that it's not about Donald Trump and Kamala Harris!
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u/Telemasterblaster Aug 22 '24
Smiling in photos was only rare among Westerners. Other cultures had no problems with this.
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u/SSChevelle71 Aug 22 '24
Yea taking pics in the opium den were all the rage back then.. almost like vaping pics.
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u/Horror-Hat1692 Aug 22 '24
He's very happy about his rice. Why shouldn't he? Not everyone have rice to eat easily.
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u/voideaten Aug 22 '24
Westerners viewed cameras alike to getting your portrait painted, so they looked serious. This guy didn't have that cultural assumption so when asked to strike a pose, he chose this one.
Cameras taking a long time was probably why the Western culture took photos seriously, but by the time of this photo, they were taken almost immediately.
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Aug 22 '24
I can't blame him, I love rice myself!
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u/not__a_username Aug 22 '24
You sir are a man of culture
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u/greenmerica Aug 22 '24
GTFO bot
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u/not__a_username Aug 22 '24
Huh?
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u/greenmerica Aug 22 '24
Hmm?
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u/egodrunk Aug 22 '24
This isnt AI?
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u/FrungyLeague Aug 22 '24
It's been around forever.
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u/No_More_And_Then Aug 22 '24
/r/titlegore