When someone is taking a picture of you and says “Say ‘cheese,'” do you actually say “cheese?” I don’t. I do put on a big, cheesy smile, or at least what in my mind is a big, cheesy smile which just turns out in the photo to be a slightly wider than average grin.

I frequently take photos of myself when I am bored and I experiment with smiles. I find that if I put on my face-stretchingest smile for the picture it looks like the smile that most people put on naturally. My eyes never look very smiley in my self portraits because I am concentrating on my mouth. Plus I have to admit that I think it’s pretty unnatural to smile when nothing’s amusing — except a man taking photos of himself for no reason other than to see what his smile looks like.

Here’s a picture of my boy putting on a smile for the camera. He takes after his mom.