Some of my favorite shots, well in fact most of them, are of people being themselves. My favorite portraits of couples or individuals are with them looking off camera. I came across what I believe is a wonderful quote and explanation. I subscribe to it wholeheartedly:

"There are not many smiling people in my pictures. I've never asked anyone to smile. Almost never. Maybe a few times I felt I had to, when people looked really depressed, but I apologized for asking. You can almost hear the sigh of relief when you tell someone they don't have to smile.

Where did "smile for the camera" come from? It's a tic. A way of directing attention to the camera. "Look at the birdie." The smile is a component of family pictures. Mother's don't want to see their children looking unhappy. My mother would hire a local photographer to make a family portrait and he would inevitably ask us all to smile. They were canned smiles. Forced. In the fifties, everything was supposed to be OK, although half the time it wasn't OK. It took me years to understand that I equated asking someone to smile with asking them to do something false.

There are people who smile naturally. It's their temperament. And you can catch a smile that is spontaneous, of the moment."

-Annie Leibovitz-