Back in those days, photographing people was one hell of a task. With annoyingly long exposure hours of several hours, photographing people with a nice smile was not really possible. Why? Simple! Try and hold a convincing smile for hours and you will get your answer.
The first photographic images in the late 1820s had to be exposed for hours in order to capture them on film. Improvements in the technology led to this exposure time being drastically cut down to minutes, then seconds, throughout the 19th century. But in the meantime, the long exposures gave us a few unmistakable Victorian photography conventions, such as the stiff postures and unsmiling faces of people trying to remain perfectly still while their photograph was being taken.
