As Ellen DeGeneres discovered when she shot her record-breaking star-studded selfie at the Oscars Sunday night, sometimes the human arm just isn’t quite long enough.
Her photo, which on Twitter quickly smashed the record for most retweets ever (now over three million), had only half of Jared Leto’s face included, and with so many big-name actors in the vicinity, a longer arm would’ve meant a group selfie with even more famous faces in the frame. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call this missed opportunity a tragedy, the situation may ring true with other selfie shooters who like to grab a shot with friends from time to time.
Of course, you can always ask a nearby stranger to do the honors, but say you’re in a location without a bunch of other people milling about. Then what?
Well, Israeli tech startup PointGrab thinks it has the solution in the form of its free iOS CamMe app, which, incidentally, picked up the Most Innovative Mobile App award at MWC last week.
It’s a simple idea that works a treat – basically, you plop the camera down somewhere, take a few steps back to ensure everyone’s in shot, then simply raise your hand and bunch it into a fist. This sets off the app’s gesture-recognition tech, which gives you a three-second countdown before taking the shot.
The app launched last year, though a significant update a couple of weeks ago added several ‘fun’ features and more sharing options. Meanwhile, last week’s MWC award helped to push it further into the spotlight.
“Selfie was coined 2013’s Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year and continues to be a global obsession,” PointGrab’s chief marketing officer, Assaf Gad, said recently. “It’s our goal to make gesture control available across all platforms, laptops, TVs and mobile. CamMe is just an example of the easy and practical way gesture technology is becoming a part of every consumer electronics user’s life.”
With selfies continuing to grow in popularity, more and more companies are looking at ways to simplify the process of grabbing such a shot. After all, selfies snapped with an outstretched arm can often leave you with your head buried in your neck as you strain to maximize the distance between you and the shutter – a look that flatters no one.
Other selfie solutions include remote shutters like HISY, Shuttr, and #TheSelfie. Or there’s always the quikpod, which can help add some creativity to your video shots, too.
[via LA Times]
