'Selfie tourism' - AIBU?

[SunflowerPosers]

This weekend I went to a beautiful sunflower field not far from where I live (NC for this as don't want it to be too outing), and I just wondered if anyone else feels the same way as me or whether I'm being too judgey and unreasonable?

There I was with my little DSLR camera trying to get some nice photos of sunflowers, and I couldn't believe the number of people who clearly thought the place existed for their own personal photo shoot.

Women (of a range of ages, not just the early 20s 'influencers') all clearly dressed up, doing 'candid' poses (where they deliberately don't look at the camera for some reason), instructing increasingly exasperated partners to take 20 more photos of them doing very similar poses. People walking around with obnoxiously large 'selfie sticks' where they've got the camera trained only on themselves the whole time, rather than just taking a moment to put their phone down and be present.

Maybe it's my age, but I don't really get it, and just think it all looks so cringeworthy. Of course, I understand wanting to get one or two photos of yourself in a nice location, but some people seem to take it to an extreme level of narcissistic behaviour.

And it seems to be common at so many places now. Go anywhere pretty, and you can barely move for the amount of people with selfie sticks. I'm half convinced that a lot of people you see on walks are only interested in getting photos of themselves to show where they've been, rather than actually enjoying walking!

Apparently there's a term for this sort of thing that I wasn't aware of, selfie tourism. People who specifically go to a location to get the perfect photo of themselves, rather than appreciating where they actually are.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who thinks this is crazy?

Quite a massive difference between (1) expressing a written opinion anonymously on a comment site for other anonymous users and (2) publishing multiple stagey, repetitive photos of your OWN FACE all over social media!

I visited the Mauritzhuis in Den Hague yesterday.
You can't get near The Girl with a Pearl Earing for people taking pictures. So, I stood in front of them, being a mean old bag.
The same with Vermeer's wonderful View of Delft, with a man setting his wife up for a photo op in front of it.
Why can't people buy a postcard, and just enjoy the pictures?

Back then you wouldn't devote hours to photoshoots ,(unless a professional) because a good 90% of the images would be out of focus or headless or have somebody's thumb in the way, and you wouldn't know until you had the pictures developed at a chemist's. I bet our DC wouldn't believe us if we told them about photography before digital cameras!

That takes me back to "catalogue poses" 20+ years ago. We knew we were being daft as we stood there artfully in the corner of the shot one hand on hip, the other pointing at the view beyond like a Millets advert.

But we did it in quiet places and not preventing anyone else from accessing the trig point on a busy peak.

The big difference in OP's style of photography, a standard snap and a photoshoot is time and space.
A regular snap is quick; everyone gets their time and moves on. Snappers also tend to accept that there will be others milling around and get on with it so don't hog the wider area.
A DSLR user takes more time, but working in macro takes little space; they're also looking for little interesting details so not clustering in the same key view points as everyone else.
A photoshoot is slow and takes excessive space as they want the rest of the area cleared to perfection.

Your children wouldn’t have found this “great fun”. Fact

And where the heck are all these multiple “statement walls”??!

Really? Most kids love seeing pictures of themselves. We went to a museum of illusions a while ago and the kids absolutely loved having photos taken and seeing themselves looking giant or tiny, apparently floating in the air and so on.

Yes because that’s We did a whole summer of plonking the then children in front of "statement walls", statement fields or whatever when we were out for a personal album 🙄

Ah, so you took that "whole summer" completely literally and are assuming that they did no other activities at all for the whole break except take pictures in front of walls.

It's possible, I guess. She'd have to clarify.

Is a statement wall one with big flowered wallpaper on it?

Oh my children were and still are, perfectly capable of expressing their honest feelings about things. They took their own cameras, used mine (with some supervision), and happily discussed t-shirt colours and how the colour wheel works with complementary colours. They were informed that no photos would go online, they helped choose the final additions which got printed out for the albums, they were photography projects in collaboration.

Not really the actions of children "not finding this great fun fact"

Have you ever tried to get a child to do something optional over and over and over again that they don't find fun, or enjoyable, or educational, or perhaps yes they just did it because it made me happy, which in itself wouldn't be such a bad thing would it?

They were everywhere during 2015-17 summers, just when instagram exploded.
Well we seemed to bump into them all over the place (got the album to prove it!)
There are some still around, although interior decoration has moved on and now a lot of places decorate for the selfies, so the need for one dedicated wall I am assuming is not quite as necessary perhaps.

Yep we trudged them from wall to wall, social media shot to social media shot, we did nothing else!

Of course we fucking didn't, we noticed that walls were springing up, and if we happened to be somewhere we got a picture. It took minutes out of random days out, days out doing something totally based on their interests. Usually when we needed a cool drink in a shaded cafe.

Yes sometimes, we went out for long summer walks to somewhere with natural colour, like a sunflower field, which we had already passed and said, be great to come back with the camera and complementary attire.

These were two separate personal photography projects.

Can be
They come in all different colours and materials
There are sometimes Xs painted on the floor to indicate the best position to stand in.

It's not people taking photos that's the problem, it's how many people now just go to places to take photos that become part of their "brand".

Like in galleries, there are 6 floors of paintings and then one "famous" painting, and you know which one it is, there is a crowd of people around just that painting the rest of the gallery largely ignored, and a young couple, girl leaning over pretending to look and contemplate the painting, leaning, hand under chin, and a hapless boyfriend attempting to capture this moment, quick snap, look at photo, maybe take another one, then out. It's utterly insane. All done in a very tight crowd.

The Mona Lisa is having to be moved or something, with timed ticket entries, it's always been popular, and the story of how it ended up in France is possibly the most interesting thing about it. You can wonder how many of the happy snappies know that story, my kids do, they haven't actually seen the Mona Lisa yet but we have had a few debates over who actually has the legitimate claim on it (because Italy think it's theirs and want it back).

Some people miss things because the desire to take a photo for the socials is so overriding now that no one can stop to take time to think, discuss, get into something a bit deeper than snap, snap and away. It's becoming a lost art, hopefully it comes back.

Again…sure, that’s exactly what I said 🙄

Well, either clarify what you did say, because it sure reads that way to me, or just keep eye rolling and complaining without any substance. That is certainly easy, but it looks as much fun as an entire summer of no activity except forced perspective photographs, and you're the expert on fun.

Blimey

😦