in childhood photos, are you smiling?

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Not all of them. Some I'm smiling nicely, some I'm smiling awkwardly, some I'm straight faced, some I'm pouting or crying, some I look surprised, all kinds really.

In my childhood pictures I had this extremely huge, natural, toothy, picture-esque smile. Now...I just fake it or smirk.

I am smiling in most of my pictures. But a lot of them I'm not looking directly at the camera. I saw a bunch of my pictures from childhood a few months back and noticed that in most of them I'm looking toward the camera but off to the sides at someone. Also found a picture of me having what looks like a lot of fun with a string and a safety pin attached to my sock.

I always hated getting my picture taken because I had to smile. I really didn't have a choice about it. In every picture, my parents would tell me to hold a specific pose and smile. If I did it wrong, I got yelled at. If they saw a picture of me taken elsewhere and I wasn't smiling, I would get in trouble. There are hardly any natural photos of me as a kid.

That sucks.

My mother just kinda shrugged when I didn't look at the camera; an AS specialist told me that the reason I wasn't looking at the camera was due to people saying, 'smile,' but they never told me to directly look at them. This makes sense, as there are a few where I'm looking and smiling, and others where I'm looking down and smiling.

I rarely smiled, unless the camera was capturing a "natural" situation. I always had a hard time fake-smiling. I still do, sometimes. I also have/had a tendency to close my eyes or look away.

Sure, but a camera smile is so forced its kinda hard to hold for more than a few seconds! If its a portrait, a pose, etc., the smile was probably a little awkward. If its me holding an awesome toy for my birthday, then of course its genuine happiness. I don't think this is unusual at all. What WAS unusual was people telling me to stand up straight when I swore I was! My posture has always been awkward.

I saw myself in childhood pictures a lot lol.

my pics of me had me looking away a lot.

In some photos I was smiling and in others I wasn't.

My mom would always have to explain to people that I wasn't sad, I just enjoyed myself more by being observant. Even as a baby I showed very little facial concern.

I had to look for myself through my baby pictures (5 and under) to see if I was actually smiling in some of them. Only about a third, and even those were little sardonic half smiles, like someone just told me a corny pun. I never noticed before, but in most my baby pictures I'm playing alone. Holding a balloon slack faced, checking under a rock, sadly staring at a jack-the-box, holding a cat or dog looking the other way, huddled up in a clothes hamper. The closest I came to finding a picture of me playing with other kids was one where I'm about 4, I'm with my sister and nephew who are playing on a slide, and I'm just standing there examining some kind of wooden tinker toy in my hands.

I've never been photogenic... always look awkward.

I'm smiling and not smiling in my child photos.

Often smiling, see avatar at left.

Z

I did smile, but as soon as a camera appeared it turned into a 'fake' smile. I looked like a puffer fish...

One of my husband's biggest complaints is that I never smile in photos, or the smiles look fake, or I have that seriously disconnected look. I have that acute realisation that in order to look normal in photos, I have to smile, and then the photos never look normal. I smile and laugh alot in real life, just never seem to catch it on film. Weird, eh?