Sometimes you just want to get a great photo of you and your travel partner with the awe-inspiring landscape behind you, but you're limited by the length of your arms or your selfie stick. Or, you have to bother a stranger, and in our new pandemic world, that may no longer be ideal. I'm here to share a great trick that makes selfies easy and fun. To make this work, you'll need a tripod* and your phone. That's it! (Bonus tip, a compact tripod will fit in your backpack for hiking, and can also serve as a phone stabilizer for shooting video.)
To shoot your larger-than-life selfie, use the built-in timelapse app on your phone, or even better, download an app for iOS and Android, such as Hyperlapse from Instagram and Microsoft Hyperlapse for Android. The apps are the better option because they take full-resolution photos at an interval.
Whether you choose to use the native timelapse feature or an app, mount your phone on your tripod, set up your subject, and then start recording. You won't have to run over to get in the shot in less than 10 seconds, and you can play around with different poses and expressions once you get there.
Once you think you've got your money shot, stop recording. Find your saved timelapse video in your photo library, press play, and pause on the scene from the video you like best. While you're paused, take a screenshot, crop and edit it with your favorite photo editing app. You now have two great memories in one—a silly video and an epic shot.
*When you buy something we recommend, we may get an affiliate commission, but that doesn't affect what we post or your price. We donate all commissions to our favorite autism charity. Our blog is built on a free platform and is purely for fun and to share our experiences, so we're not making a profit from anything you might purchase.