Wåhlstrand wants to go beyond the rigid smiles and artificial poses of photography's more formal setups.
We all know that bad gifts inflict a cost — just think of the rigid smiles that greet an unwanted floral tie or Josh Rouse CD — but it's surprising how big that cost can be.
The crack timing is really nobody's but Mr. Johnson's, and yet, when it's time for a comic payoff, his lips remain set in a placid if slightly rigid half-smile, and your eyes are trained on the yapping bird or the monkey or the beady-eyed wooden kid.
He is now a rigid, gratingly didactic smile machine.
"She has a rigid worldview, cloaked in a smile, that borders on crazy," he said.
She stood with her rigid hands, with her desperate smile, with her socks slipping.
They were both wearing jeans, and neither was smiling, but something in their rigid postures suggested the significance of the moment.
He had a wide, pallidly smiling face, and was serenely rigid, glowing like a spray of cherry blossoms in the sun.
Framed by flashing fairy lights and with an accompaniment of honks and bells, they hurl out gaiety via strapped-on smiles, balloons, party-poppers and bursts of rigid song-and-dance routines.
Will eventually loose ability to smile, hold head up, reflexes become abnormal, and muscles grow rigid.
