Smile
Today over on A Photo Editor there's a link to a Rodney Smith blog post about smiling in photos. Rodney doesn't think smiling photos have substance. I don't know that I agree with that, but I know I tend to like non-smiling photos. I have a total of seven on my entire website and only one in my portfolio (although it depends on what qualifies as a smile... there are some very slight smiles that I didn't count). I tend to take things a bit further though… It seems I don't even like people looking at the camera.
I posted about this a year ago, but looking over recent shoots I think I'm getting worse. I routinely choose the photos where the subject isn't looking at the camera (I will say, the client rarely chooses those). I keep wondering what this says about myself.