My 10 Years Taking Selfies: How Has the Hobby Evolved - A Picture Essay

Last week we found out that Terry Pratchett the prolific and beloved British comedy and fiction author had died. I was a huge fan of his work and have read most but not yet all of his books. I was on Twitter and instantly reminded that I first learned of Pratchett's Diskworld series of books from a friend, Kuikka ie Pirja Paasilahti 19 years ago. She lent me the book Mort (where DEATH decides to retire and hires himself an apprentice named Mort to be trained to take over as DEATH. Its hilarious). Well, as Kuikka is not often on TW, I went to Facebook to contact her, knowing she'd also be sad and wanted to share. Sure enough we exchanged messages and she also came to TW for some chat there. But now I was in FB, which I had managed to avoid for ten months. And of course tons of friends requests and all sorts of news about all that I happen to know who are on FB. And now, I was hit by a nagging feeling that gosh, I had all those pictures I had intended to share on Facebook with my family and friends there who would never come here to read this blog. So I took some time to post some pictures there. And as I was digging through my picture archives it hit me, wait, its ten years from my first cameraphone selfie picture. I wonder if my selfie habit has evolved or changed at all. So one thing led to four, and here I am, with a picture essay about my photographic journey into my narcissism.

MEN WHO TAKE SELFIES ARE PSYCOPATHS

And don't laugh. A study published in the scientific journal Personality and Individual Differences, and reported about in many periodicals including Time, found that men who took selfie photographs were more narcissistic and ... get this about your madman megalomaniagical supervillain-wannabe blogger ... psycopathic tendencies!! Yes, those men who take selfies are more likely to be psycopaths and narcissists. YES, I have finally found my peer group. We should start a social network like BondvillainsAreUs dot com. (oh and why 'men' because the survey only covered men, no women were studied and no doubt some follow-up study now looks if women have the same tendencies)

Ok to be fair, unfortunately selfie pictures on digital cams and previously self-portraits on film based cameras did not form a meaningful part of the approx 23,000 pictures I've taken in my lifetime my selfies and self-portraits don't even count up to 460 pictures (2%) but .. there is some hope .. there are well over 230 of them, I estimated that in my 40 years of taking pictures, I've made myself the object - or part of the object - of the image in maybe 300-350 pictures. More than 1% definitely. Maybe I can become a psychopath after all. So yeah, this is a lighthearted picture essay of how my selfie (and self-portrait) photography hobby has evolved over time. You may find that your camera behavior has also taken some of these turns too. But obviously mostly its just an excuse for me to publish something lighter on the blog and take a journey back in time as the blog itself is now 10 years old.

THE DARK AGES BEFORE THE CAMERAPHONE

I chronicled my photography history in the addendum to the long blog about the technical issues of cameraphone design. This part today only focuses on the self-portraits. And to be clear, yes I shot about 12,000 pictures on film in the first two decades of my camera hobby, almost all of that on 35mm and most of it in black-and-white (rolling my own film cartridges and developing my own film and prints in a darkroom in my bathroom). The third decade saw a very light level of picture-taking, only 1,000 pictures. But then when I started to have reasonable quality cameraphones in my pocket, I quickly returned to happy snapping and have shot about 10,000 pictures now in the past ten years. I am currently averaging 12 pictures shot per day. So thats a lot of all sorts of pictures of just about any subject. Nice clouds, snap. Beautiful sunset, snap. Hey thats an interesting advertisement about something tech-related, snap. I got my airline booking sent to me with the confirmation code. I won't write it down, I take a picture of the PC screen with the flight info instead. snap. So I use the cameraphone very much as a Magical Memory Machine to store miscellaneous info like currency exchange rates whenever I land in any country, go to the airport currency exchange counter and take a picture of the exchange rates. Have them in my pocket, no need to try to memorize that stuff. Etc etc etc. So yeah, I am not posing in front of the third oldest church in this part of town etc...

But I do take occasional selfies yes. So lets see how this started and evolved. Early on when I was shooting 35mm film, I didn't want to waste any money ie film on pictures about myself. I took extremely few self-portraits unless it was really a special occasion. But lets start




This was my first self-portait (haha don't laugh, this was the mid 1970s and it was still the hippie era and all boys had long hair). Picture is shot with my brand new Konica Autoreflex T3 with 50mm F1.4 Konica Hexanon lens and set on a chair. I am 15 years old here in 1975. No real reason for the picture except that I wanted to try out the self-timer function. .




Then in 1986 I discovered the mirror. (camera is Canon AE-1P with motordrive, 28-80mm Hanimex lens. It was just an accident, I had my camera out and as the car was moving along, I was aiming at whatever random things you see in Pennsylvania on the highway, when suddenly I noticed the mirror and aimed for it and took this self-portrait. I have always liked this picture very much from among my collection. And reflections are something I always look for, water, mirrors, windows, black surfaces etc. Common themes among my pictures overall, are the mirror-images.

Now we had travelled quite a lot with our family and again in college on the debate team. I saw a lot of famous landmarks and almost never took pictures of them. I somehow felt it was too obvious. (I really REALLY wish I had taken just 2% of those pictures back then about the famous landmarks that I happened to be at, because I went everywhere with my camerabag 7 days a week). But when I moved to New York City and I was bicycling around the city (mostly Queens where St John's University main campus is) I discovered the World's Fair ground of 1939 in Flushing Meadows. And I saw an awesome steel globe that I just loved. So I actually prepared this outfit to match that backdrop.




So this is 1988 and my first self-portrait with a landmark. If we think of the modern 'selfie' this is to a large degree the pre-smartphone pre-digital aka 'analog' parallel to that using a film-based camera, for me.  So its the famous landmark and me in self-portrait. (Camera is Canon AE-1P with Hanimex 28-80mm lens mounted on Cullmann tripod)




A year later, 1989, I was graduating with my MBA and now used my skills in photography to do an outside portrait in a carefully positioned and lit photograph in color, wanting that profile look etc. (Camera is Canon AE-1P with 75-250mm Sigma lens mounted on Cullmann tripod). This is at St John's University campus in Queens New York. And up to now I never had done any kind of 'collecting' of self-portraits ie never shooting more than maybe 1 or 2 per year among thousands of pictures taken. But then I suddenly discovered a 'theme'




My baby. The Audi. (picture shot with Canon AE-1P and Hanimex 28-80mm lens on Cullmann tripod) I drove that car across America East and West, North and South. And now, I wanted to document those trips. And of course I wanted my car in the picture, and a local landmark or some sign showing where I was, and yes, put myself in the picture. Selfies on travel. With the car. Obviously this picture is from Mississippi Beach. The year is 1992. And just to show, that very same car, same NY licence plate and all, made it across the Atlantic (drove it all through Europe too) I took it as far North as..




The Arctic Circle just North of Rovaniemi in Finland. This is 1995 and over four years, my Audi and I were involved in about two dozen self-portraits in famous places from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco to the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Audi travel pictures From New York to Helsinki.

Now, while my picture-taking had a serious lull decade in the next ten years, and now from 2005 on I have taken lots of selfies, I am not exactly the 'normal' cameraphone and selfie picture-taker. I had a history of taking at least some self-portrait pictures of myself for the past 40 years, maybe only a couple per year for the early decades but I definitely grew and expanded the topics and ways of using that method of photography, and by the 1990s, I had discovered my first topic for a hobby of self-portraits. The travel diary of my Audi and me, on very long distance rides and trips that often involved a week or more of driving 12 hours a day or more. But in some ways, my self-portrait behavior with the cameraphone (and digital cameras in general) kind of 'reset to zero' and I started from the beginning again, in 2005.

So my first cameraphone was a Nokia 3G handset called the 6650 from 2002. The camera was only VGA resolution (ie 0.3 megapixels). There was no flash, it didn't record video, and worst of all, there was no removable media ie storage SD card. So pictures taken on the phone stayed on the phone essentially (no WiFi, no Bluetooth). It was technically possible to send pictures via email as attachments but I never even bothered to try as networks were still so slow and 3G was mostly not rolling out yet (it WAS fun going to Japan and noticing the 3G network was up). If I needed pictures, I had my professional quality Canon SLR setup, and would then print them into pictures, and then scan those photographs into digital. Gradually then the cameraphones got better and by 2005 I accidentially stumbled upon this phenomenon we now call the selfie. 

THE CAMERAPHONE AGE OF SELFIES

So in 2005 I took my first selfie picture. I had been taking pictures occasionally on the phone for 3 years by now, and had no particular desire or plan to take self-portraits. I still owned my Canon pro setup on film should I need a proper 'portrait' for any reason and I owned a scanner so I could turn those prints easily into digital images. But in 2005 I happened to have a business trip to my old home town, New York City. And I had some time, I went to my old haunts in Midtown Manhattan where I had lived for 6 years, visited familiar pizzerias and electronics stores etc. And walked no Broadway, when I saw the marquee with the familiar name: Late Show with David Letterman. The Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway between 53rd and 54th Streets. 

Now a little side-track so you understand the significance. I used to live on 56th and Broadway. I could see that Letterman theater entrance from my living room window. I walked by that marquee every single day, often several times per day. And did I care about Letterman? Dave is to me the greatest talkshow host there ever was. I have watched Dave from the time I arrived to the USA, in 1983 on essentially all nights he was on, in whatever country I was in, if Letterman was on some channel from Britain to Hong Kong. And back when I lived in New York City, I had never taken a picture of that entrance or myself near it. Huge fan, but never had the picture. And I moved away from New York back to Europe ten years previously, in 1995. So now I was back in New York and here suddenly am facing my absolute fave TV talkshow host and comedian's theater, that I know very well, and I have a camera in my pocket.

And one more significant thing. The SECOND best talkshow host of all time, after Dave, to me was always Johnny Carson (I hated big-jaw Jay Leno). Johnny was very good friends with Dave. Carson retired years earlier but he had JUST died in January of 2005. So 'talkshow host death' was definitely well on my mind as I regarded the Ed Sullivan Theater proudly announcing Late Show with David Letterman in those familiar blue and yellow letters. And I knew that any time suddenly Dave himself might decide to retire, or he might find himself cancelled if the ratings turned bad or the CBS network for some reason changed its lineup or he might have a heart-attack or might die. Here it was, an iconic New York landmark and my top fave. I thought to myself that Dave might not be around the next time I happened to get a business trip to New York. And the brilliant idea, hey, I have the Nokia cameraphone in my pocket. I can take a self-portrait of myself, here in front of the theater. Now, I wonder if that camera has focus close enough to keep me sharp, and the theater name can still be read. Well, its a quick way to find out..




This is genesis for me. 2005. My first selfie. The picture is only VGA resolution as was my cameraphone at the time, the Nokia 7600 tear-drop shaped weird 3G phone that had the keypad arranged around the screen (known internally as the 'Kampela' aka Flounder the fish). (the picture has been shrunk in size for this blog but is about VGA in dimensions). I had never seen anyone take a selfie with a cameraphone nor had I read about it. I didn't know if this was even possible with the focus and if the picture would be sharp, but I tried and then checked out the picture on the screen, and sure enough, it worked. And just so you know, the tall building in the back, that is the apartment building where I lived on the 35th floor, second from the top ie its a 36 storey high building. And funny that by coincidence now 2015 is when Letterman is actually retiring.

So yes, this first selfie for me is the totally a 'standard' selfie concept. A tourist at a landmark, uses cameraphone and takes picture with arm stretched out, putting himself in a picture in front of the landmark. And at that time while I greatly liked this picture, I had no plans to make this a common habit. I was shooting a couple of pictures per week at this time and if someone had asked me will I take more 'selfies' like this at other landmarks, I'd have answered that probably never again but maybe could see one or two in a decade if it really was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of tourist destination.

But it didn't take long for the second selfie. I was in Berlin for the first time of my life, towards the end of 2005, and that one evening/night before I would fly out in the morning, I went sight-seeing. One of my fave architectural monuments in the world is the iconic Brandenburg Gate. The landmark of Berlin. I had to get to it and I did, but by then there was no light. But would you know it, just some weeks earlier, Nokia had started to ship its 6680, the first cameraphone with a built-in LED flash. And now I was saved. And sure enough this is my second selfie:




Its still 2005 and now I've used the LED flash of the Nokia 6680 to light up a night-time selfie (image shrunk for this blog). A typical problem for me often in travel is that I work daytime and the only time I could have to go see anything is at night. And that would need a flash. But this worked out reasonably well, for a 2005 era cameraphone. I would use this image of the Brandenburg Gate in some slides I had as a backdrop if I wanted to indicate some stats or case studies from Germany. And by now I am thinking that actually, there is no reason to 'limit myself' to only the ultimate 'bucket list' type of extraordinary geographic landmarks, actually I should take pictures of anything noteworthy in terms of landmarks. And from 2006 on I start to take plenty of those 'typical tourist selfies' and soon discover that there are many polite people who will offer to take the picture for you. And I found a perverse kind of pleasure telling them no thanks, I can do this myself. And thus I would start to prefer the selfie rather than pictures taken of me by others...




So we get to 2006 and one of my absolute fave places on the planet, Victoria Falls. This selfie I loved so much, it was the first time I used that selfie as a wallpaper on my PC and smartphone. When I left the hotel heading to the falls, I was fully cognizant that I wanted good pictures, specifically good selfies. As it worked out, I didn't take any pictures of the Falls without myself in it haha...  By now I was fully comfortable taking landmark-selfies at any location. (image taken with Nokia N80 at 2mp, shrunk down for this blog)

Next came 2007. That was the year my all-time fave Formula 1 driver, Kimi Raikkonen started at his new team...... Ferrari. And now, suddenly, Ferrari red was THE color for me. And right as I moved to live in Hong Kong, the HKIA International Airport had a full life-size mock-up Ferrari F1 racecar outside the Ferrari store in the taxfree zone. I had not taken a selfie of me with 'a thing' but this was 'the thing'. So here:




I'm at a red Ferrari Formula 1 car, its 2007. This became instantly my new wallpaper both on the phone and PC. (Image taken with Nokia N93 at 3mp, shrunk down for this blog). And I now started to expand the items I might do a selfie with, not just landmarks but things. A nice antique airplane at an airport for example or a car etc. And would that then be a big step to this:




Yes Yoda from Star Wars certainly, it is. (picture taken with Nokia N82 at 5mp, shrunk for this blog) I visited the offices of Qik in San Francisco and when I saw Yoda I was smiling broadly. I didn't think of taking a picture. My hosts said - hey do you want to take a picture with Yoda. And immediately I thought yes. And then when they offered to take the picture, I said, no thanks, I can do this (and proceeded to take the selfie). Up to this point I never took selfies of myself at offices of my clients, but taking Yoda with me, from this point on, I would essentially always take a picture of me somewhere near a logo of my client if we were at one of their premises. If the client relationship was not in the open, I would never show that selfie of course, to the public domain, but when that client would hire me the next time, I would try to work the old selfie - with their logo - into the new presentation... Nice way to identify with the audience - and obviously if the client openly said they use me - then it was of course also perfectly fine and appreciated if I showed at some public conference a selfie in front of their HQ for example and mentioned our relationship. But that all started with Yoda and I've now been collecting those client-Selfies for 7 years. And occasionally if I see some life-sized doll of some action hero like when Batman visited Hong Kong, I went to take selfies of me with the realistic-looking Batman figure.

2008 would also offer me an opportunity to discover a new type of selfie. I saw a nice old Mercedes car in Athens, and took a picture of it:




The picture shot with the Nokia N82 at 5mp (shrunk for this blog). And then after the fact, on the airplane flying back home, I took a deeper look at the picture and guess what.. its a selfie!




Yes I stumbled upon the hidden selfie. (detail enlarged from picture above). I am there captured in the fender of Mercedes as a reflection. This was with a 5mp image, imagine how much sharper that would be with 16mp or 41mp nowadays..




In 2009 I then made that leap from the offices of my client, to branding of an event. It was a NokiaSiemens Networks event for their Middle Eastern telecoms operator/carrier clients, held in Cairo where I was invited to chair. (Picture with N82, 5mp, shrunk for this blog). And at that event, thinking of 'Nokia branding' I decided to go take that selfie at some coffee break. Except that as I left Egypt and took a look at my new pictures on the plane as I often do, it hit me that gosh, I should do this with all conferences. And while I didn't immediately remember to do that at all events, I soon learned to look for the event signage and take that selfie, as proof I was there, and very practical at some future events maybe in the same country or on that same topic years later, that I was at this event before... with the selfie. Plus again, its the Magical Memory Machine. One selfie taken at the big welcome sign tells me forever what city, what event name, what event producing company and the picture is date-stamped. And not one word of keyboard-entry into a calendar. Brilliant and easy. I do this now as a rule.

Year 2010 saw my 'photographer' instincts wake up to the selfie. As I was taking several dozen seflies per year just with my work-related documentation, the concept of taking a selfie was very well in mind. And now my 'eye' started to spot opportunities. And so my interest in reflections spotted this opportunity:

Its Shanghai and the Maglev train (fastest most awesome ride you can do on the planet, within public transportation). (picture shot with N82 at 5mp shrunk for this blog, note the N82 is visible also in the reflection) And yeah, now its the mirror reflection self-portrait as a variation of what I did with the film based camera and the car-mirror 25 years prior. And then I started to also 'prepare' for some selfies. Like my evolution of self-portraits eventualy went from random pictures to sell dressed and set ones, that too started with this picture:



Its also 2010 and its the Jas Marina Formula 1 circuit in Abu Dhabi (where I spoke at a conference). There was an awards gala, but I arrived early wanting to take the dressed-up selfie with that iconic building in the background. (picture taken with N82 and its Xenon flash, 5mp, shrunk for this blog). So remember my dear Audi and my long car journeys? I haven't stopped driving but now its with rental cars. And from 2011, I returned to take car selfies, especially at various relevant points on my long car journeys. It started at this traffic sign in South Dakota:




Yes, the sign points to cities in North Dakota. I am about to cross that border, and North Dakota in 2011 became the last of the 50 states that I had entered in the USA (so I have now visited all 50) and haha, also, I have driven a car in all 50 states. (picture shot with Nokia E7 and its 8mp main camera, shrunk for this blog). So I've returned to continue my hobby of collecting car selfies. But 2011 had more for me. Ah, the megalomaniacical Bondvillain? Mr Spy is it? What about when you have a picture you want to take, but you feel its not really appropriate or you are embarrassed. Ha! That means some tradecraft. Spy stuff. So. What happened was, that I needed a picture to show someone typing on a Blacberry-style handset. And I of course being a man, prefer that my pictures have women haha. So I happened to be at some airport and spotted a pretty woman texting feverishly on her BB, and she was nicely facing away from me, so her face would not show and she could not be identified. If I took a picture. BUT... But the OTHER people would see that the strange guy in the hat took a picture of the woman from behind? What kind of pervert is he....




So I did this. I took a 'pretend selfie' haha. Mr Bond-Jamesbond yes. A spy selfie. (shot with Nokia E7 at 8mp, shrunk for this blog). I pretended to take a selfie of myself, but I aimed the camera to make sure I catch her. As the camera had a good large megapixel image, I could easily crop out myself, and be left with just the woman texting...  This is what she looks like now as the decoration on one of my slides:




And nobody would ever guess that I really was taking a picture of her, not a selfie of me... see, how sneaky this can become!!! I am a MASTERMIND... I will take over the planet! Today, selfiecameras, tomorrow, the world! But talking about the psychopath supervillain set on taking over the world, we get to this picture




This selfie is my first problem picture shot on a smartphone (shot with E7 and 8mp, shrunk for this blog). I was speaking at an event held here, at the 'Airport City' tech and business hub in Belgrade. They have that retired airplane, a Soko INJ 22 Orao 'lollipop jet' ie it has no engine or radar or any tech needed to fly it, its just the exterior. And they use it as a sign to the area. So I wanted of course, being a fan of airplanes, and already taking lots of selfies with various airplanes and cars, a selfie of that jet-sign. And as I was aiming my selfie (difficult to get the full airplane into the picture so I did some walking back and forth) suddenly several guards came from the buildings towards me, rapidly, and in very bad English they started to accuse me of spying... haha yeah, I really want to spy on your retired lollipop airplane... But that took plenty of explanations of what I am doing, and I actually showed OTHER selfies with cars and planes, to show I'm no spy, I want to have a self-portrait of myself with tech. And of course I explained that I was the keynote speaker at the event starting in an hour.. But for a moment I did think I might be tossed into a jail in Serbia... Be careful with those selfies..





Then right at the end of 2011, I discovered how to combine my tech passions with cameras, and my love of James Bond. I started my 007 Selfie Collection. (picture shot with Nokia E7, 8mp shrunk for this blog). The idea is that I freeze-frame a Bond movie, to an exact scene in front of an identifyable landmark in the real world. Then I go to that city to that building to that particular side, that exact doorway, etc, and place myself into the exact same spot where a James Bond actor has been seen in the movie. I have been collecting these James Bond Selfies now for 4 years and have published two sets of my pictures first set is here and second set is here. But it started with this picture at the Magere Brug in Amsterdam (the movie is 007 Diamonds Are Forever with Sean Connery as James Bond). As it turns out, that angle was not the right one for the picture, so I coudln't use this picture (I now have all the freeze-frame DVD screenshots on my phone, at that time I didn't have the picture). And my other big passion is of course Formula 1 (go Kimikimikimikimikimi....)




So this is 2012 (picture shot with Nokia E7 and 8mp, shrunk for this blog). And when I had the chance to be at the VIP area in Shanghai, I had to take a selfie showing just exactly how awesome my viewing angle was. Note we are only minutes from the start of the race (cars in distance) and look at the grandstand, this is the big race.. and where am I haha... best viewing spot to see the start, in the whole racetrack...  And while we are on F1, what about if you see some really hot women approaching?




Time for a selfie. Quick get the phone and turn facing away from the hot pitbabes and snap! Got my oogling selfie with the gorgeous ladies. (Cameraphone is Nokia E7 with 8mp picture, shrunk for this blog) And from that, we get to actual celebrities...




So still at the Shanghai GP, this is the pit lane and those TV dudes from Sky are celebrties including past F1 drivers Martin Brundle (blue shirt) and Johnny Herbert (white shirt). Picture is obviously still Nokia E7 taking 8mp picture, shrunk for this blog. So now I'm doing the spy selfie again, but specifically to do paparazzi selfies, get myself into a photo with a legitimate celebrity (or two). Yeah, my narcissism is clearly finding new ways to expand with selfies. So we're coming close to the end.




In 2013 I was visiting the building that used to be Nokia HQ in Finland. (picture shot with Nokia 808 Pureview 41mp shrunk to fit this blog). The signs were still saying Nokia and I knew those were going to be replaced very soon, so I took that picture, with the idea, that this could be a good picture for the back cover of my new book on how Nokia died.... Now taking selfies so seriously, I went to visit that office area explicitly with the intention to find selfies I could use later in that use in the book.

And we get to 2014. Now we get my first use of taking selfies with others. Note, this is not because I wouldn't want pictures with others haha, far from it, but rather, that almost always when someone might like a picture with me, there will be others around, who can take the picture, at a better photo distance than the arm's length selfie. So yeah, I've done 'fan' pictures and 'colleague' pictures from well before 2005 and my first selfie, but hadn't done a paired selfie, me and someone else, until 2014. So this was 




Guyaquil in Ecuador. The speakers were given genuine Panama hats, and of course I wanted a picture of it with our host, Alexis Garcia of the AWA but this was a quick moment, some ran to the elevators to get to their rooms, and nobody was around who could have taken the picture for us, so I took out my phone and snapped the pair selfie. Funny I had gone 9 years of taking selfies but not one with another person until now. And meanwhile had hundreds of pictures taken of me with other people but always taken by a third person, not as a selfie. Not until Ecuador. Ok and I showed you my very first cameraphone selfie, shot in New York City ten years ago. Now I show you my latest selfie.




What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. (Picture shot with Nokia 808 Pureview at 41mp shrunk for this blog). Yes now that we all take selfies, comes the double-selfie! Both taking selfies simultaneously. This was at the end of the World Summit Awards and this is my dear friend Catherine Warren of Fan Trust in Canada.

So thats my history with selfies. So I started taking just very touristy selfies, of only 'bucket list' world famous uber-landmarks but soon expanded that to any recognizable landmark in anytown. Then expanded it past landmarks to things such as cars, planes and even movie character puppets etc. I then started to add various memory elements, I want to remember this, a company, conference, a journey etc. As my frequency of selfies increases, I've also started to use photographic techniques such as looking for reflections, and actually preparing for the pictures by particular outfit etc. Then I discovered the stealth selfie, taking pictures in secret. To take a picture of someone else, faking it as if I am taking only a selfie but aiming my camera so that the intended target fits into the picture (whether they see me taking pictures or not) and extended that even to paparazzi-style celebrity pictures. I've already gotten into trouble attempting selfies where perhaps pictures are not allowed. And I've graduated so far that now I am taking selfies even intended to go into printed books as official PR pictures etc. While it seemed in the past that there always were many people ready to take group pictures for me, now in just the past year, I've noticed opportunities to take group pictures also as selfies rather than asking someone else to take the picture of us.

Do these experiences fit your patterns and have you spotted other aspects to your picture-taking on your mobile phone? Are you using a selfie stick (I carry one with all my trips but have never used it - for a selfie. I use the selfie-stick with a table tripod, as an ultralight unipod, so a super-portable and somewhat flimsy triipod, just about enough to hold the smartphone). How about the selfie-cam (inward facing camera)? I never use that, because the outwards-facing camera is better (at least so far, on smartphones I own).

And what do you think? Narcissist psychopath tendencies? You betcha! Lets talk selfies.

Comments

[Samvith]

Haha! You look like a mix of Sherlock Holmes and James Bond in these pics. Also, I dont think it is narcissistic at all. It is natural human tendency. Keep going!

[VladimirK]

Is the car in South Dakota a Toyota Corolla ?

I know those aren't bad cars, but you could have made an effort, and rent something else, at least a convertible Mustang or even choose the "surprise-car" option (usually a Ford Crown Vic)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Samvith - haha thanks. Bond is perhaps also a lifelong effort, Sherlock Holmes I didn't see coming. Thanks!

Vladimir - ROFTLMAOPIMP gosh that was a good call and yeah, if I had ever thought when renting that car, that a picture taken on that journey would end up in an anniversary blog here, years later, I would MOST DEF have dug up some premium car. I have TONS of selfies in convertible Mustangs in America or with rental Audis in Europe etc.. and good call on the Crown Vic, that was the car I drove from Miami to Key West that one night I went to take the Bond Selfie at the Hemingway House (if you go see the 007 selfie pics) but the car is not visible. In the first 007 Selfie collection, there is a selfie of me in a Mustang convertible at the Goldfinger section). So yeah, could a been a bit nicer car here.. in fact a LOT nicer car. Funny you'd spot that, didn't occur to me while preparing this blog - I just wanted to make sure that Fargo can still be read on the freeway sign if you look at the enlarged picture hahah...

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[VladimirK]

If someday you visit Moscow, I know co-owner of Aston Russia... for your 007 collection ;)

Personally, even if convertible is my and my wife's favourite choice, we sometimes check the surprise option : the rental agency gives you what they have left and which is higher than C class - usually it's a crown vic or a Lincoln Town Car, but can have a Dodge Challenger, a Cadillac or even a Suburban

[Submitted]

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water.
Tomi T, the JAWS of selfies.

[Kirill Zelenski]

I even have seen how you did some of these shots...:) now your lovely Kimi again in your lovely team :)

[abdul muis]

@Tomi

Sorry I have to post Off-Topic here, but this is interesting...

In the past few day, Microsoft has been building WINDOWS 10 for a couple of Android device. Namely, XiaoMi Mi4 & ZTE Nubia Z9, and Huawei device. At first, there were a speculation that XiaoMi & ZTE & also huawei will make Windows 10 device, but here is Hugo Barra post on G+ clearing the situation

https://plus.google.com/+HugoBarra/posts/ZEgN5ZsCBeh

Hugo Bara said that XiaoMi didn't make the Win10 device. It was microsoft creating the OS for XiaoMi Mi4 without the help of XiaoMi, and XiaoMi only coorporate with microsoft by letting the software giant to do it officially on XiaoMi forum.

This is interesting, because it seems microsoft will target a favourite device, and making a ROM and hoping some android device will downgrade the OS to Microsoft Windows 10. Something like someone buy a Windows notebook & install Linux by himself.

[baron99]

XiaoMi activity is just desperation from Microsoft. Latest windows phone (POS) news:

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/03/21/how-microsofts-windows-phone-is-falling-even-furth.aspx

http://betanews.com/2015/03/20/freedom-apple-cut-my-windows-phone-chains/

You see it over and over ...NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PHONE! ...except a few waiting for Moore's Law :-) ...or Godot

[RottenApple]

@abdul muis:

It'd be interesting to know whether they are trying to get a stripped down (no desktop) or a fully featured Windows to work on that phone. The former would be an exercise in pointlessness, the second may hint at a shift in focus.

[abdul muis]

@RottenApple

I agree this is interesting. It seems that Satya Nadela have the best solution for Windows Phone handset. Rather than selling a device at lost, and hearing "I would buy that (android) device if it's come with Windows 10". They build a Windows 10 custom ROM for Android device.

I wonder what this inception means for steven Elop carer.

[baron99]

More news why NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PHONE!!

http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/199817-windows-phone-10-is-dead-before-it-even-arrives

http://mashable.com/2015/03/13/microsoft-windows-phone-surrender/

It's always fun to annoy the astroturfers with reality :-)

[RottenApple]

@baron99:

You are just an annoying troll. I'd rather see some INTELLIGENT discussion about the failure and possibilities of Windows Phone rather than getting your lame catchphrase for the 1000th time.

[baron99]

For the astroturfers that pretend they want a discussion they should read the technology news. I just posted 4 VERY recent articles from 4 different news sources. They are just FULL of the INTELLEGENT discussion. Here's some more news from yet another different news source explaining why Windows Phone has no shot at ever being relevant

http://bgr.com/2015/02/24/windows-phone-vs-android-vs-ios/

It's true NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PHONE! ...except those waiting for Moore's law or Godot... too funny. But I understand that it's kinda annoying for the astroturfers when reality doesn't support them. They can only resort to name calling.

[RottenApple]

My, my, aren't we a little lost robot, stuck in an endless feedback loop? Please stop acting like an idiot and start some intelligent posts.

I really don't know what your problem is, accusing everyone reacting to your shitposts as astroturfers. No, Windows Phone, does not have a chance, but I still prefer something intelligent over your piles of garbage.

Regardless of subject matter, troll is as troll does.

[Flowers]

Selfies the next next Generation trend . its like a new addiction of youth. even some place has banned selfies .like
The National Gallery, London
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
Pointe-à-Callière Archaeology Museum
The Colosseum in Rome
The Palace of Versailles, Paris
19 Smithsonian museums and galleries
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Cooper Hewitt Museum, New York
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Guggenheim Museum, New York

[adi purbakala]

@flower

They ban selfies stick, not selfies

[baron99]

Ok, I am into intelligent discussion. Please tell us why "Windows Phone, does not have a chance"? ......listening.

But I got to wonder why 6 little words bother some people so much. I can certainly understand why they might bother astroturfers. Of course, the six words are: NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PHONE!

[PhilW]

At Baron99,

Look, this thread is abot selfies, not Windows and I think you are annoying just about everyone who is and ever has used this blog. I agree with RottenApple, please go and troll elsewhere.

[baron99]

I didn't start the windows discussion and I responded to posts about it with relevant news (not nonsense like "waiting for Moores law" and 'all in"...) . I can't help it if the astroturfers don't like reality that NO ONE WANTS A WINDOW PHONE!