SELFIE STICK, THE NEW WAY?

A couple uses a 'selfie stick' to take a photo overlooking the city skyline of central Seoul. Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Image.
If we can remember how 2014 was a year of selfie’s by big Nigerian celebs and more, now there is a new technology that allows you take better and smatter selfies, in case you don’t know, it is called the selfie-stick, Selfie-sticks, are retractable poles with spring clamps on the end that can hold smart phones for picture-taking.
People are taking a lot of selfies these days. The selfie stick makes it easy and makes it fun, photos mostly taken of oneself and shared on social-media sites like Facebook Inc.’s Instagram -- have gone mainstream, even with a lingering stigma that the practice is best left to reality TV stars like Kim Kardashian. In April, President Barack Obama endorsed selfies by snapping one of himself and Vice President Joe Biden in the back of a limo while traveling in Pennsylvania.
TOP INVENTION Time magazine named the selfie stick one of the best inventions of the year (2014), with the Oxford Dictionaries making “selfie” the word of the year in 2013. U.S. consumers responded by making the selfie stick the gift of the year in 2014. The hash tag #selfiestick dominated Twitter, as gift-receivers posted pictures of themselves with the gadgets, which typically sell for $10 to $30. Hundreds of thousands of selfie sticks have likely sold in the U.S. since this summer, including about 100,000 in December alone, Camera shops, department stores and pharmacies had a hard time keeping up with demand for the selfie stick during the holidays. Some of the products include Bluetooth remotes that trigger the camera. Others require the user to set a timer on their Smartphone to take the shot. Many of the sticks can unfold as long as about 4 feet (1.2 meters). It is not surprising that the selfie sticks were among the must-have holiday gift.

HOW TO USE Selfie sticks are more than for just vanity shots of one-self, photographers can use the pole to extend their reach, getting more friends and family members in a shot or including more sights in the background. Beyond selfies, the stick can help people get interesting camera angles or be used as a microphone boom arm. It’s not just about shooting your eight closest friends at arm’s length, despite hundreds of people carrying around the three-foot sticks lots of people still cannot take the perfect photo, they end up with half of the “selfie stick” in there photo.
Should we be expecting to see, this in Nigeria soon? We should NOTE the following points, (1) Don’t have the stick in the picture. (2) To capture the best angle, try turning your head a few degrees to the right or left so that your features will appear less flat, (3) Show off something new in your selfie like a haircut, or new items of clothing. (4) You need good lighting for best selfies. (5) Use the phones back camera because it will take a higher resolution picture. (6) Think about what background you want, the best selfies have something interesting, behind the subject, so take NOTE. Happy selfie-ing everyone.