In defense of the selfie

Selfies are getting a bad rap today. People love to mock the selfies and the selfie takers, especially their lips (quack!). I disagree. I'm writing this post to defend the selfie.

I can't say that I've always taken selfies, but I remember one of the first I ever took. I was at Acadia N.P. in Maine, and we were at the top of Cadillac Mountain. I was overcome: I was at the spot that sees the sun for the first time every morning! I had to have a picture! I looked around, but no one was near me (my family was probably eating blueberries on another side of the summit). So I took out the camera, extended my arm, and took a selfie. Later I made this page, one of my favorites:

The photo is not great, but I loved the white space on the picture. This page might have started my love affair with scrapping on the white space,

Like my first selfie experience, selfies are great for recording an experience where no one else is handy to ask to take a photo. For the scrapper, selfies are also good for taking photos of yourself to use on "All about me" pages, like the one below:

I didn't take the photo with the page in mind, but after I'd taken photos of my sons shoveling snow, I decided to snap a photo of myself too, and I love it.

I also like selfies because they are a quick and easy way to take photos of me and my children:



This Week in the Life happened to overlap with tornado safety week, so I snapped the one on the left while we were in our tornado safety area. (Pardon my son's crazy eyes.)

My boys love posing for photos, and there's something warm about grabbing the camera and snapping a photo of us up close when no one is around. If I were to get up to set up the camera and timer, I think it would lose some of the warmth.

I also love recording dates with my husband:

OK, Vegas was a little more than a date. My parents babysat for me when I got a rare treat: I traveled to Vegas with my husband when he was there at a conference and I had a long weekend. Rather than asking people for a photo, I just turned and snapped photos of ourselves in front of the landmarks. Sometimes people did offer to snap--that's common in tourist areas--but it was really quick to snap a selfie.

The Guthrie was again a treat: I managed to get a babysitter the night I scored free tickets to the Guthrie. I took photos before and during intermission and made this page with them. (Note: I take better selfies than my husband. He's taller but he always decapitates me when he takes the shot. Therefore, I shoot. So to speak.)


Finally, I know that people dis selfies because of the infamous duck lips that people make. I don't think I make them--maybe I do?--but I don't care if I do. As you can see from the page below, which is made up of some timer photos and some shot with the help of a friend, I don't care about making funny faces in photos:

After all, it's for posterity.