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“There are people who can see and others who cannot even look”

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Re: “There are people who can see and others who cannot even look”

#51

Post by dfinninger »

mlinhares wrote: post #48
ajkjk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American smiles in photos are mostly not fake, fwiw.

It is incredibly surprising to be told to smile when taking official photos in the US. I just couldn't understand the first time it happened at the DMV, the person kept saying "smile" and i'm like, wtf, why would i smile, this is an official photo for my driver's license.

That’s interesting. I’ve been told every time (so far) to keep a “neutral face”. I smiled once and the guy let out a heavy sigh and made me take the photo again (Redwood City, CA DMV).

Re: “There are people who can see and others who cannot even look”

#53

Post by pavel_lishin »

ajkjk wrote: post #46
pavel_lishin wrote: post #39

> Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I think I can see in his deadened, ambitious eyes the character that would later lead Leopold to inflict immense suffering on the people of the Congo for personal gain. The spark of humanity that you can see in the eyes of so many of Nadar’s subjects just isn’t there. Or maybe the author's perception is colored by what we know of this man.

Well yeah, that's why it has that disclaimer. Everyone knows there's an obvious bias there.

Sure, just feels like a weird thing to call out, especially when you've admitted the bias is there.

Re: “There are people who can see and others who cannot even look”

#54

Post by wging »

aa-jv wrote: post #32
somenameforme wrote: post #10

A related video series showing many places around the world in the 1900s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-UhDuKZ2OQ There's a lot of really interesting things to see there besides the sites themselves. The obvious one worldwide is that this is before the mass commercialization of clothing + planned obsolescence of such, which seems to have a very negative outcome. But one thing not so visible that's really interest…

>sternness I really enjoy observing this and other changes in social tone visible through the ages in archaic videos .. One of my favourite idle pasttimes is to watch videos on Youtube of digitized film from a bygone era, especially of cities I've lived in, or visited and with which I am familiar. For some reason it is just so interesting , for example, to visit the streets of Vienna from 100+ years ago, and see how…

I love the 1896 "what the hell is that" double-takes, where they glance over and then approach the camera. Might've been these people's first experience with one.

Re: “There are people who can see and others who cannot even look”

#55

Post by blarg1 »

dfinninger wrote: post #51
mlinhares wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is incredibly surprising to be told to smile when taking official photos in the US. I just couldn't understand the first time it happened at the DMV, the person kept saying "smile" and i'm like, wtf, why would i smile, this is an official photo for my driver's license.

That’s interesting. I’ve been told every time (so far) to keep a “neutral face”. I smiled once and the guy let out a heavy sigh and made me take the photo again (Redwood City, CA DMV).

same, here in Australia

Re: “There are people who can see and others who cannot even look”

#56

Post by alpaca128 »

tr81 wrote: post #49
somenameforme wrote: post #10

A related video series showing many places around the world in the 1900s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-UhDuKZ2OQ There's a lot of really interesting things to see there besides the sites themselves. The obvious one worldwide is that this is before the mass commercialization of clothing + planned obsolescence of such, which seems to have a very negative outcome. But one thing not so visible that's really interest…

> how simultaneously stern everybody looks with no fake smiles They still have stern looks in photos back home in Asia. But when they immigrate to America, everyone starts smiling in photos. My parents had a theory. They noticed that even in real life, Americans smiled more than back home. They think and I agree with them, that back home life is hard for most people and it is hard for people to put a smile on. Someti…

In very early photography the exposure time was so long that people used expressions they could keep up for a while without moving.

Europe is comparable to the US in terms of happiness if not better, yet Europeans don't smile as much. Faking a smile is considered weird unless you're a politician in press photos (and those look creepy if you actually look at them closely)

Re: “There are people who can see and others who cannot even look”

#57

Post by rcyeh »

dfinninger wrote: post #51
mlinhares wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is incredibly surprising to be told to smile when taking official photos in the US. I just couldn't understand the first time it happened at the DMV, the person kept saying "smile" and i'm like, wtf, why would i smile, this is an official photo for my driver's license.

That’s interesting. I’ve been told every time (so far) to keep a “neutral face”. I smiled once and the guy let out a heavy sigh and made me take the photo again (Redwood City, CA DMV).

Can confirm. US passport photos want a neutral expression and explicitly say (not in the below page, but elsewhere during the renewal process) not to smile.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/how-app...

Re: “There are people who can see and others who cannot even look”

#58

Post by michaelt »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #9
h2zizzle wrote: post #7

>The painter naturally visited Nadar’s studio fo a portrait; it captures an artist of fierce intelligence: As true as it might be in many cases, I've begun to think that there might be something fundamentally groady about basing assumptions of intelligence on appearance. A brief meeting is bad enough, but a single photo? It's poetic to think that they tell us more about a person than they do.

A non-groady interpretation might be that we know Manet was intelligent, and the portrait captured that well; you might not be able to judge food by its photograph, but a photo that makes it look delicious when it actually is delicious has managed to capture the deliciousness. Personally, I don't find it groady anyway; pretty sure a neural network trained on IQs and photographs could find reliable signals of intellig…

If I trained a neural network and it learned that stethoscopes are strongly correlated with IQ, have I learned anything useful?

Re: “There are people who can see and others who cannot even look”

#59

Post by filoleg »

mlinhares wrote: post #48
ajkjk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American smiles in photos are mostly not fake, fwiw.

It is incredibly surprising to be told to smile when taking official photos in the US. I just couldn't understand the first time it happened at the DMV, the person kept saying "smile" and i'm like, wtf, why would i smile, this is an official photo for my driver's license.

It’s not a requirement, just a suggestion. The most i ever got was “say cheese!” once at one of my DL renewals, but that was it.

In the US, I had to take photos for driver’s license at least 4 times, for green card 1 time, and for passport 1 time, not in a single one of them I am smiling. Saw the DLs of my friends more than a few times (either at bars or clubs or while crossing the border or when the topic arrived naturally), and the breakdown of smiling vs not smiling is 40/60 at most (with a heavy lean towards not smiling)[0].

I partially agree though about the US being a bit special in the aspect of even just allowing people to smile in ID photos. In the previous country I lived in and where I had to take ID photos, it was explicitly prohibited to smile in those photos, and they would reject applications if someone did.

0. Purely anecdotal, as it could totally be the case that I just accidentally ended up befriending mostly those who don’t smile for ID photos.

Re: “There are people who can see and others who cannot even look”

#60

Post by JoeAltmaier »

mlinhares wrote: post #48
ajkjk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American smiles in photos are mostly not fake, fwiw.

It is incredibly surprising to be told to smile when taking official photos in the US. I just couldn't understand the first time it happened at the DMV, the person kept saying "smile" and i'm like, wtf, why would i smile, this is an official photo for my driver's license.

Whereas here in Iowa, smiling is forbidden in DMV photos. I guess it's state by state.
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