The Biggest Problem With Travel Selfies Has Just Been Solved
Excluding newborn babies and grandparents, there’s barely a single person alive who has been able to escape the ubiquitous notion of the ‘selfie’ in recent years. But the problem with turning the camera on yourself at arms length is that your face fills so much of the screen, leaving the background a little lost in the mix – obviously a big no-no when you’re trying to showcase your epic holiday destination.
A new service launched by Tourism Australia allows you to not only star in the photo but to also “selfie the scenery” via an automatic camera placed hundreds of metres away. Promising to “supersize your selfie”, the GIGA Selfie app has designated standing spots with Wi-Fi where you can activate a distant hi-resolution camera via your smartphone.
The app shows you where to look and then issues a countdown to the photo. A short video clip is then emailed to you that starts as a regular close up of your face but zooms out dramatically to show off a comprehensive view of the surrounding landscape.
Basically, you can think of it like a really, really long selfie stick. Check out how it works in the video below.
The concept is aimed at the Japanese tourist market, given that over 320,000 visitors from the country visited Australia last year. The app is free and the first round of supersized selfies will happen at the Gold Coast from September 5-6. You can find out more about the GIGA Selfie here (the site is in Japanese, but Google Translate will give you the gist of it).
