Dwight Watt - Newspaper Article #233 1/8/2014

Selfie is a new term you are seeing used a lot. It is a picture someone takes of themselves.

Most of the time when you hear people talk about Selfies it is where someone holds the camera and aims at themselves and takes the pictures. Although these have been done a long time, people seldom did that with film as it cost money but with a digital camera (or camera on phone) it costs nothing.

Selfies are catching criticism in the press recently by some people taking pictures of self as ego oriented but that is not always the case. We have seen many opinions recently about President Obama and a Selfie with the Denmark prime minister recently where it appeared one of them took a picture of both of them which would be a Selfie. Remember politicians do want to get their picture taken and published.

I travel a good bit and often by myself and I had people for a number of years complain afterwards my pictures were really nice but no where did they ever see me as having been to these places. I now make a conscious effort to get someone traveling with me to use my camera and get pictures of me or I ask strangers (I choose them that look like honest photographers) to take a picture of me at sites. Then we have me in the pictures at places I go to.

However you see lots of people just hold up and take pictures of their face at times and those are Selfies. I really doubt those pictures are permanently stored and that they are very seldom printed.

Don’t overdo the Selfies but remember the Selfie can be a good way to get yourself in pictures at places.

How do you do them? One way is aim camera at yourself and take, but about all in picture is you. The second way that will get backgrounds etc. included is use the self-timer on your camera (set to 10 second) and set the picture, click the shutter and hurry over to get in place in less than 10 seconds and at 10 seconds it will shoot.