The rise of the selfie-stick

Any serious photographer owns a unipod, also known as a monopod.  They’ve been around as long as tripods have.  It’s like a tripod, but has just one leg.  As in, yes, it will fall over if you let go of it.  The main use is to steady a camera whilst still holding it and framing and taking photos.  It takes the weight, and it stops most of that annoying camera shake you suffer from when zooming hundreds of metres to get a clear view into, ahem, a pretty neighbour’s bedroom, for example (Such activity is illegal in most territories by the way).

Most photographers already know that they can also be used to hold the camera at longer than arm’s length whilst taking a photo of themselves posing with others.  This started to become a craze with Polaroid (Instant) Photos, which weren’t just for taking ‘private’ photos of privates.  Only with the advent of camera-phones and smart-phones, did this taking a photo of oneself get given the name ‘selfie’.

There was a phase when people posed for themselves in front of mirrors.  This was daft really, since the photo they’d take a) had the camera/phone in shot, and b) they would appear the wrong way round with their left on the right, their right on the left.  Eventually, the current holding the camera/phone at arms length method became the norm for ‘selfie-ing’.

Then they discovered the unipods / monopods.  And by getting higher or further away than ‘arm’s length’, not only could more be gotten in to the picture, but all traces of double chins are eradicated.

Now sold as ‘selfie sticks’, with a range that include various methods of pressing a button on the camera or phone in order to take that excellent selfie (Those of us with phones that have voice activated cameras just have to shout ‘cheese’!), the unipod / monopod has come of age, upped its price and changed its name. The selfie-stick is here!

But don’t people look like prats carrying them around! Even more so when they use them.

Look, mine’s for professional purposes, honest.