How Does Aspirin Find a Headache?
“We asked about twenty experts in photography and photographic history, and the early responses were fairly consistent: The subjects in old photographs weren’t all depressed; the slowness of the exposure time was the culprit. In some cases, the exposure time in early daguerreotypes was up to ten minutes. Typical was the answer of Frank Calandra, secretary/treasurer of the Photographic Historical Society: Nineteenth-century photographic materials were nowhere near as light-sensitive as tod...ay’s films. This meant that instead of the fractional second exposure times we take for granted, the pioneer photographers needed several minutes to properly set an image on a sensitized plate. While this was fine for landscapes, buildings and other still-lifes, portraits called for many tricks to help subjects hold perfectly still while the shutter was open. (The first cameras had no shutter. A cap was placed over the lens and the photographer would remove it to begin the exposure and replace it when time was up.) Holding a smile for that length of time can be uncomfortable; that’s why you see the same somber look on early portraits.MoreLess
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