westcoastprairiegirl

Okay, before you roll your eyes in disgust, please know that I get it.  Selfie sticks are annoying.

I get it.  Heck, selfie sticks were banned at Disneyland, Wimbledon, the Palace of Versailles and the Colosseum with most sighting safety reasons.  Many museums have banned them as well to help preserve the art (i.e. preventing selfie sticks from accidentally piercing through a Van Gogh).  Festivals such as Lollapalooza and Coachella have also banned them.  Apparently Coachella stated that they were banning, “selfie sticks and narcissists“.

I had the same mentality.  Self sticks = narcissism.  But I think selfie sticks get somewhat of a bum rap.  At the right time and the right place, they are actually quite useful.

Travelling will make you appreciate the selfie stick.  Armando and I love to travel.  We want to document our adventures with photos.  Isn’t that the point of cameras?  To document our lives?

So here are three points to help defend the selfie stick:

1. Trusting Strangers –  Sometimes you don’t feel like rolling the dice and handing your camera over to a complete stranger, hoping they will take your picture and not sprint the other way with your camera in tow.  So then you end up taking a selfie that always ends up with a picture of a big head and unflattering angles that morph you into a triple-chinned sloth.  And what’s behind your head? Well, people will just have to take your word that the Eiffel Tower or the Mayan Ruins is behind you.
2. When you are alone – Well, you have no option but to take a selfie.  Sure, you can take a picture of the Eiffel Tower without you in it but when you are old and senile, you being in the photo will help you remember that you were actually there.
3. The person has no clue how to take a photo – So you find that trustworthy-looking person to take a photo of you but then it never fails…you select the person that has no clue how to frame a shot.  Take noted picture below:

That was us in California.  We were in the underground wine cellar at Kunde Family Winery in Sonoma Valley.  We were standing in front of 5 million year old lava rock.  Kinda cool.  We wanted a photo.  I handed over my camera to a gentleman and the above photo was his artistic photo of us in front of 5 million year old lave rock.  Apparently our heads were not of importance and the blurriness added an abstract touch.  I take blame for selecting a 90-plus-year-old man to take the photo.

I love being in photos with my husband, my family and my friends.  I want to capture those moments shared together.  I don’t want to be holding the camera while I take a photo of all my girlfriends.  I want to be right in there with them.  And I don’t want to try and hold the camera out in front of me while I try to get a shot of us where one of us ends of being like Jared Leto in Ellen’s famous Oscar selfie.  Where is Jared in the photo, you ask?  Exactly.  He’s the eye in the corner.

Clearly Ellen needed a selfie stick.

Our friends bought us a selfie stick because they thought it would be useful in our travels.  And that is when we truly learned to appreciate its value, when we became the owner of one.  We obviously don’t use it for every shot as there is a time and a place for using the selfie stick, but there are definitely moments when it comes in handy.   So to all you nay-sayers out there…don’t hate on the selfie stick;  they help capture love and adventures , snapped into treasured permanent memories where nobody is left out.