We often hear the question concerning the frigid poses of the photography of the 18th and 19th century. Here is website that tells it all. Its interesting to know that our ancestors had a metal clamp behind their necks held their heads still to prevent the picture from blurring. They were told to be still and blink as little as possible. This explains why many of these early photographs feature our ancestors with fixed, blank stares, stiff positions and few smiles. Exposure time was about a minute, as compared to the fraction of a second modern cameras require. For more information http://www.genealogy.org/~ajmorris/photo/phot.htm Leslie