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SMILE

Today I've been thinking about smiling, this is because I've been smiling. Yesterday I found out this blog has been shortlisted for a prize, not just any prize but The Blog North Awards. You can vote for my blog here if you would like to, and check out all the other shortlisted blogs too:

www.blognorthawards.com/vote

Smiling is intrinsically linked to photography and has been for decades, probably since Kodak made people aware that they were creating 'memories', and that you should smile for the family album. The Brownie was the camera that made photography mass-market and Eastman Kodak's clever marketing campaigns really created a culture that we mostly adhere to today. Although we still say cheese for the camera, the family album now exists on Facebook, our computers and smart phones, I guess history will reveal how enduring these pictures prove to be. 

So for your delectation today I've searched magazines from my living room for smiles and scanned them. This was actually a slightly harder challenge than I'd envisaged as people don't smile in 'serious' pictures. So even though I would imagine most of us want to be happy and fashion and lifestyle magazines promote aspirational worlds, the people in them look surprisingly downbeat. Anyway I got there, keep smiling!








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