Historian Christina Kotchemidova argues that people were motivated mainly by cultural forces, not practical considerations. “Etiquette codes of the past demanded that the mouth be carefully controlled; beauty standards likewise called for a small mouth,” she says in her 2005 paper on the history of smiling in photographs.

Though photography was still relatively new in the 1850s, portraiture was not, and tradition said that proper people should not grin or bare their teeth in their pictures. Big smiles were considered silly, childish, or downright wicked.

When we were in Ireland, we met up with a friend and took a few pictures. While snapping pictures, I realized this person decide not to smile in any of the pictures I took of them.

At one point, I went on to jokingly tease them about this, because in my opinion, I find pictures to be more authentic when people show their smiles.

In retrospect, that was pretty selfish of me to do. Beauty is subjective, and how someone chooses to pose themselves in a photo is frankly none of my business.

Maybe that's why we collectively choose to opt for a "silly photo" after taking a serious one. It gives us all a chance to take one that's socially appropriate for the holiday card, and one that is socially appropriate for Instagram.

Anyway, I'm gonna try not to force my kids into smiling for pics anymore. I'll still prompt them, but if they want to smile, then cool. If they don't, then cool.

If you, like me, have seen those initial pictures from the Webb telescope and thought, “Well, those are really cool looking but I'm not nerdy enough to get why they're such a big deal”, then this is the article for you!

To photojournalism purists, it was pure blasphemy: a prestigious prize, third place for photo of the year, granted to a New York Times photographer who’d used not a 35mm to document U.S. soldiers in Iraq, but simply, his iPhone — and an app called Hipstamatic. Immediately, traditionalists went berserk: “What we knew as photojournalism at its purest form is over,” one photojournalist lamented. Using Hipstamatic in a news report, another commentator proclaimed, was “cheating us all.”

I struggled trying to decide whether or not to put some iPhone photos in my portfolio. I decided that it was worth including them because 2012, as it has always been, the best camera is the one you have with you. I don't always need to use my SLR to capture photos that are meaningful to me and (hopefully) captivating to someone else.

I like to keep a copy of every photo I've taken with an iPhone synced to my phone, mostly because there have been multiple times when I want to show somebody something I've taken with my camera phone and I've been bit in the butt because it's not on there. I do this by making smart folders that correspond to each phone, so I have folder for iPhone 2G Photos, one for iPhone 3GS photos and one for iPhone 4S photos. After a recent trip to Europe, I glanced at the photo count in each of those folders, and, well, look for yourself:

• iPhone 2G Pictures: 893
• iPhone 3GS Pictures: 955
• iPhone 4GS Pictures: 1,173
  

For a little fun, why don't we break it down by average photos per day:

• iPhone 2G: 893 photos / 801 days = 1.11 photos per day
• iPhone 3GS: 955 photos / 778 days = 1.23 photos per day
• iPhone 4GS: 1162 photos / 194 days = 5.99 photos per day
  

To be fair, I've used my camera a lot more in the last few months due to multiple factors that may not have existed while owning my other phones (trips to Jamaica/Europe, social media requirements for my job, etc.) But I consider myself to be a camera nerd and I would not be using this camera for those purposes if I didn't think they took adequate-looking photos (which, let's face it, the definition of adequate is a lot different for me than it is for your average iPhone user).

I forgot I had this in my RSS feed list until today, when I got blasted with 30 pictures at once.

But really, it was a pleasant surprise. Some of these photos (like the one I linked to) are really, really well done.