Friday 12 March 2010

Sel-Ca for the Masses

This new advert of a Samsung digital camera is just an excellent example of "Korean Wave" (Korean culture promulgated abroad). A prominent part of Korean pop culture is “sel-ca” 샐카 (Korean slang for “self-camera”, which is Konglish that basically means, taking a picture of yourself using a digital camera, often that of your mobile phone). It's my opinion that this advert is primarily based on the selca phenomenon -- keeping in mind that Samsung is a Korean brand. 



Combine the tips from Samsung's advert with the "Star Tips on Sel-Ca" from Pop Seoul, and you can't go wrong. And I, of course, believe that there's no need to be that good looking or even that great a photographer; the real trick to looking good in a picture is to take a number of photos, choose the best ones and then Photoshop them. That's what I do most of the time with my self-portraits.I know its cheating, but we live in an artificial age of digital manipulation. It's either that (inexpensive and pain-free) or plastic surgery (expensive and painful).

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