🇬🇧🤷♂️Why So Serious? Earliest Photos of British Soliders 🎞🇬🇧
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- čas přidán 26. 08. 2024
- Hey guys! We react to a compilation of the earliest photos of British soldiers.
Editor: Josh Conway
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Soldiers aren't supposed to smile, they're meant to be as serious as possible.
My guess is that these would be the first experiences of these individuals having photos taken. They would probably be more experienced in posing for portraits. So maybe they thought that posing with serious faces. was the natural thing to do.
Quite right; it was a different culture to the modern day when photographs are taken constantly at a moment's notice.
If you look at photographs of soldiers in your Civil War their exposure time was a little less but they still had that 25 mile stare.
In the early days of photography the traditions of sketches and full-blown portrait painting would have held sway in terms of poses and facial expressions; characterful and profound was what people wanted; they were not expected or required to be smiling; that is something that surely comes with the commonplace when you can take a photograph whenever the whim arises. Smiles and laughs were for your private life: these were images to be viewed by people outside your family. Portraits were also generally expected to contain clues to the persons life or interests; hence the musical instruments, swords, telescopes/charts of naval officers, books or scientific instruments for academics.
As Lilian said the exposure times would have been long as well; these days, when smiles are universally expected, I find it a struggle to keep an 'artificial smile' going for a few seconds whilst people are faffing about with their phone cameras.
All of the people photographed, in their daily lives, in those days, would have found this an entirely novel, strange and even disturbing event.
One of the oddities that arose, was the genre of photographs taken in the Victorian era, of the recently dead. They were carefully dressed for the occasion and could be family members or particularly-valued and esteemed members of household staff.
Running an empire is a serious business.
I read once that, as Felipe was saying, early photographs were thought of much the same as sitting for a portrait painting. If you look at photos taken during the American Civil War you will see very similar looks and poses.
As I understand it, the first cameras had very long exposure times of several seconds. They
weren't capable of shutter speeds of 1/125 sec, 1/30 second etc available in modern cameras.
So subjects were told to stay still with a fixed facial expression which invariably was not a smile
because that was harder to hold.
That's why in the early photos they all stand so stiffly with no movement and neutral facial
expressions.
I think you were right, Felipe. People wanted to appear dignified in their portraits. Another possible cause is that the photographic plates had to be exposed for several minutes, and it is hard to hold a smile for that long. Any movement would give a blurred image.
How about both of you trying to hold a smile perfectly still for 20 seconds, then you might realise why they have chosen those expressions. Also as the plates were also expensive, you couldn't really have plenty of tries until you were successful.
Yes, it changed around the 50's / 60's. My parents are smiling in their wedding picture but my grandparents are not.
It took so long to take a picture in those days they were fed up with waiting.
You had to sit still for a long time for early photos. So holding a smile for a long time would ache your face, that is why everyone looks serious in early photos
There was a misconception that the photograph could capture your Soul hence the reticence.
I was about to make the same point!
In the early days subjects had to stand very still whilst the photo was taken
I think holding a smile for any length of time while an old black and white photograph was taken may have blurred those old pictures, but keeping a straight face would have been more sensible for the end result.
The film you alluded to would be "Jane Eyre" from the Charlotte
Captain Fenwick clearly has his head held in a neck-brace. I would guess exposures were nearer a minute than thirty seconds.
The two portraits from 02:47 onwards show a son of the poet Robert Burns.
to be fair ,camera tech was new ,id look so serious too !
beats me how anyone thought that dressing soldiers up in bright red tunics was a good idea. red is ok for ceremonial duties, but on the battlefield they makes them easy to see and an easy target for gunners. the American war of independence was a good example this. the snipers had a field day
Interesting video and great images from so long ago . Funny thing is although I love a laugh and joke I hardly ever smile for photos and if I do it is only a very slight smile .
You might be interested to know a little more about two very interesting people featured in the photographs; Sir David Brewster and Brigadier (later General,) Colin McKenzie.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Mackenzie_(Indian_Army_officer)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brewster
For me the difference between George Clooney and Brad Pitt is that George Clooney is well established on the production side and is confident about his legacy whereas, perhaps, Brad Pitt is desperate to be taken seriously before his looks fade completely.
Photography was serious and there were long exposure times
RE the lack of smiling, I feel like there are places in the world today where people don't smile so much, particularly less affluent places where people taking photos, and fiming videos, with phones isn't that common.
I've seen lots of travel vlogs on here of Westerners going to developing countries and the locals just stare, almost looking intimidatingly at the person filming them; they're just not as used to it as we are. True, some of these places aren't easy places to live and therefore the people live a harder life, but I'm pretty sure you'd find a lot of humour being used in such places (perhaps even more than in Western societies), it's just that they don't trust a foreigner walking around their town filming their lives, and TBH, why would they?
I feel like this element of mistrust, and unfamiliarity is what's at play in these old photos from the 19th century - they weren't accustomed to it, and they perhaps didn't know how to react to having their photo taken. We should really _know_ that humour was a huge thing back during that time simply by the popularity of an author like Charles Dickens, whose novels were absolutely full of humour.
Nice end screen. Re DISEMBODIED HEADS IN MUSIC MAGAZINE PICTURES FROM THE 60'S ... That's always struck me as odd ... perhaps it goes back further and isn't just British music magazines that would print "floating heads" - no necks! of all the big names of the day - It makes me cringe a bit. I don't suppose anybody is too interested in what Paul McCartney's neck looks like (etc etc) but people don't half look odd without a neck. I'm tempted to have a glance through my collection of old music magazines to see if there's a trend of stern faced musicians before the Beatles came along and started joking around as much as they did. A quick glance back and everyone looks suitably happy to be pop stars, not just The Beatles. I confess i couldn;t find as many disembodied heads as I convinced myself was the norm in the early 60's - I found one front page from 1963 with all four of the Beatles MINUS NECKS - they all look like they've been executed. The the same magazine in 64, features them all WITH necks, so it seems they were granted a pardon. I then got distracted by the discovery of tiny insects, paper mites or whatever, threatening my collection so I never got any further once I'd done some hasty hoovering. ANOTHER odd pose / photographic fad I've noticed in some early magazines is every bloke smoking a pipe as if it's the most natural thing in the world ... and by coincidence, yesterday i stumbled on the odd image of a YOUNG (mid 20's?) BOMB DISPOSAL EXPERT smoking a pipe while kitted out in all his "bomb proof" attire, helmet etc, while sizing up the situation and giving instructions to police etc - It just looked a bit odd for such a young man to be smoking a pipe in the late 70's or early 80's. Seeing as one in twenty of them got blown up and none of them actually volunteered for the job of bomb disposal - they were volunteered - so they all said - well i wouldn't have blamed him if there was something other than tobacco in his pipe - although quite obviously there couldn;t be for them to do their job - my poor attempt at humour. Anyway, yeah, nice stained glass window end screen.
Are you allowed to smile for a passport?
I think Lily was right...and wrong. The reason people from that period posed like that was indeed because of the exposure time needed by photographic stock but it took a few minutes not 30 seconds for an image to fix onto a plate.
For the majority of these men war was not the distant war of modern times but often involved the thrust of the bayonet and home life was to say the least tough, where they could only dream of what some people call tough today.
They are trying to look noble, as was common in early portrait photography.
Wartime Radio The Secret Listeners
Well with no colour in those days, everything in black and white who can blame them for not smiling lol 😁
rv jones battle of the beams
THE THUMB IS FREEMASONS
I just wish that the 120psi lips and duck face poses would go out of fashion. The only people that find this attractive are others the do and look the same.
I struggle not to laugh when young women hold their phone up and suck their cheeks in, then go back to looking normal - I've been blaming the iphones for altering people's faces so much - I thought it was an app - no, they're doing it on purpose as if they're sucking the ink out of a ball point pen. I'm guessing this is what duck face means. Must be a body dismorphia (?) kind of thing.
Might smile more now because of improvements in dental care.
Stiff upper lip old boy and Know your place. Stand to the last man. Any weak officers that show cowardice would be covered up. Unfortunately not the same for the average grunt. You need to watch the program called Sharpe.
Sharpe is Hollywood fiction. The people in these photos actually existed
@@nedeast6845 Of cause it is, But the attitude of the time was so.
Perhaps it's hard to hold a smile for the time needed for the exposure? or maybe they we all so reserved back then, people grinning were perhaps looked upon as foolish or not to be taken as serious as the intelligent stern faced thinker? 🤔
1.29 is ha a woman ? did they have transvestites back then?
Felipe, you should be able to hold a smile for a lifetime being married to Lillian! Lol God bless you!! If that was me you’d think I’d painted it on!! Lol