Maybe the most used line in the English language is “smile and say cheese!”

Most of us know that line comes from a person holding a camera and ready to snap a picture. These days taking a photograph is all so common that very little excitement is connected to the flash. But it hasn’t always been this way and that is a fact.

There was a time and I feel it safe to say that prior to the 1950s or maybe before the 1940s the sight of a camera or more than that someone you knew owning a camera was rare. I know I was born in 1949 and My Uncle john Hughes was a photographer along with his many skills. I know this as on the back of my first baby pictures is printed “John Hughes Photography.” So when I can first remember my parents had some time in the early 1950s purchased a Kodak Box Camera. It was rectangle in shape and completely black. My parents might have taken two rolls of 12 exposures on each roll a year. Pictures were only in black and white and until I put two and two together did I connect the reason for all pictures were taken outside. The camera came without a flash attachment thus stopping all photos indoors.

I think that in the late 1950s my parents purchased a Brownie Hawkeye Flash! They I think did so as Peg and then Ben were graduating and involved in many events at school and they wanted a picture of some of these. Most of all when they graduated high school! The camera was more compact and the flash attachment fastened to the side. A light bulb would be screwed in after the threaded part was moistened by mouth so that the connection was good. Seems the flash wouldn’t and that picture was lost. Anyway we had that camera until Christmas 1964. That was when technology once again advanced cameras for the common man and dad went to Swopes Drugstore and bought a Kodak 35 MM camera. This camera allowed us to have our pictures put on slides so they could be slid into a projector and onto a screen so a large and in color picture would appear. This allowed us to invite family and friends over to see the latest batch of photos we had just had developed. During the years of the slides the amount of pictures taken per year increased immensely and it seems to me the increase hasn’t slowed down yet.

Now I had an uncle Charles Hetterick and a cousin Tom Houser who both were ahead of their time and had a great desire to master the art of photography. Both had cameras that took regular pictures and both had 35 MM cameras for their slide pictures and they both had movie cameras way in advance of most everybody at that time. So we knew of these devices but until the late ’50s and early ’60s were they readily available in the rural areas of the United States. It was easily understandable that when either one or both of these men would say they had a new batch of pictures we couldn’t get to see them soon enough.

It is said if you don’t have something in most cases you don’t miss it. But with these two in the family we saw it and as time passed I guess we missed it. I will say now that even though it was nice to see yourself and family and friends up on the big screen our slides never seemed to be as enjoyable as Uncle Charles’ or Toms’. I have never had the eye or desire to want to take pictures, but I do love to see those that have been taken. Pictures for a moment stop time and cause a connection that when seen is never forgotten. That is such a huge part of why photos are so loved and desired. The picture reaches out and says here look at this. I want you to see this.

Over the years technology has advanced so unbelievably that today instead of reaching for your Kodak one only has to pull out their cell phone and snap a shot or as many as can be imagined. I am so very lucky as my wife is a photo bug and although I have teased her for years about the mound of pictures she has taken I am always there to look at what she has captured. On top of that my daughter and son took after their mom in this area and again I am so glad they have because as they email them or Facebook them to me I get to enjoy what they have seen also. In this respect, I am glad as when I see a photo I most times can recall what was happening when it was taken and I get to replay that captured scene one more time and enjoy it again and again.

I know it used to be that you might get your picture taken on the first day of school or your birthday or the last day of school. Today the number of times photographed is almost uncountable. We are now calloused to a camera flashing or clicking away no matter for a reason now needed. It seemed when the time for the camera to be used we would be lined up in a group most times and one person would line us up either by height or age or relationship (cousins etc.) Each family had their way and as we stood waiting it seemed forever we would finally hear the words we were waiting on and that was “just smile and say cheese.” Today we don’t have to hear that line anymore as we never a long enough time to forget them!

Rick Houser grew up on a farm near Moscow in Clermont County and loves to share stories from his youth and other topics. He may be reached at [email protected].