The UR-Selfie Stick

[FPjohn]

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...-1926-shows-selfie-stick-older-than-meets-eye

yours FPJ

 

[f16sunshine]

Yeah the thing is....
Selfies are no more original today than Tattoos, Branding, Piercing, Beardo-ism, or Bacon (take that Burning Man boardroom executives!)

 

[Paolo Bonello]

I'm gonna go on a limb here and say it's probably a shutter tripping stick for someone without self timer or remote shutter cable. I think the camera is most likely mounted on a tripod.
It just looks like an invented story to me.
The image is about two inches wide, not unlike a 6x6 contact print. So a medium format on the end of a stick? I have my doubts. the man must have had a bricklayers grip to hold that stick with a significant camera weighing it down in the manner the story suggests. Yeah I'm gonna call BS on the whole story unless there's more proof than someone's foggy childhood recollection and a story tellers creative license.

 

[randolph45]

somewhere in the box

somewhere in the box

This brought a smile to my lips.
I have a picture of my wifes father and mother using a tree branch to trigger the shutter on his Kodak folder from the late 20s early 30s 620/deckeled edge book with brass brads.

 

[Dwig]

I'm gonna go on a limb here and say it's probably a shutter tripping stick for someone without self timer or remote shutter cable. I think the camera is most likely mounted on a tripod.
It just looks like an invented story to me. ...

I agree. The image looks like it was taken by placing the camera on some sort of support (tripod, fence post, ...) and taping the shutter release with an ordinary cane or walking stick.

Far less elaborate than the rig I used for some self portraits (aka selfies) back in the '80s where I used a tripod mounted view camera, a rubber band trying to trip the shutter release, a small block preventing the release from moving, and a long string tied to the block on one end and to a light stand on the other. I would then pose, hold a balanced pole in one hand and gentle release to pole so that it would slowly tilt and then fall to strike the string which would pull out the block letting the rubber band trip the shutter. The delay in the pole falling gave me time to reposition my hand. A rather Rube Goldberg arrangement, but it worked.

 

[FPjohn]

We may have shifted from the the old Kodak I was there to Here I am.
yours FPJ

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/05/b...e-social-content-challenge-for-the-media.html

 

[FrankS]

Not a selfie stick, which would be attached to the tripod socket on the bottom of the camera, and therefore exit the photograph on the bottom edge.

 

[FPjohn]

A shutter tripping stick then. A question mark in the original post might have been advisable.
yours FPJ

 

[Solinar]

The bloke in the self portrait definitely looks please with his bit of ingenuity.

Best Regards,

 

[FPjohn]

http://www.theguardian.com/technolo...11/meet-the-man-who-invented-the-selfie-stick

yours
FPJ

 

[JoeV]

It looks like a wooden yard stick. I know because that's what I used to trip the shutter on my Polaroid model 800, loaded with a paper negative, when testing the camera about a decade ago. Many of the cameras from the era within which the photo was taken used similar kinds of shutter release levers, spring loaded and easy to trip with such a stick.

~Joe

 

[michaelwj]

The end of the article did highlight one thing though.
What sort of a place is our world where people no longer feel comfortable asking someone else to take their photo? Don't people interact with real people anymore?

“I think the selfie stick is a very sad indictment on our age really,” he said. “We’ve become so insular we haven’t even got a friend to take a photo for us now or are too scared to ask anyone else to do it. So I’m horrified at the selfie stick.”

Cheers,
Michael