Your iPhone or Droid can shoot photos or video that, with a click of a button, can directly post to Facebook or Twitter or your blog.
So the fact that everybody is doing this, 24 hours a day, is not shocking.
The question for public figures is, Should you be doing this at all?
There's no technology barrier anymore. You don't have to shoot with a camera, upload the photos, crop them, edit them and upload them one-by-one into Facebook or your blog.
Now the process is simple. Click and share.
Too simple.
Politicians, actors, rock stars, authors and public figures of all kinds are getting in hot water for photos they shared with the world this way, photos that they took themselves and meant to email their friend, or send as a direct message in Twitter, but hit the wrong button. Bad photos.
I'm not simply talking about Rep. Anthony Weiner and his sexting scandal, with all the self-portraits of him shirtless that he took with a cell phone.
Let's say you're a supermodel who looks great in a bikini, and you're dating an actor with a six-pack who works out three hours a day You're both on the beach. Why not take a few photos with your iPhone and put them up on the internet for the world to see?
Here's why self-portraits are always a bad idea:
1) Taking Good Photos Is Hard.
Think back to that supermodel and her actor boyfriend. Yes, they're on the cover of magazines and shot on the red carpet all the time.
There are hours of preparation for every magazine photo shoot. Hair and makeup. Lighting. A professional photographer using a camera that might cost $10,000 or more.
Even then, a pro is happy if they shoot 200 shots and get five great ones.
And what do they do with those five great ones? They spend even more hours editing them in Photoshop, removing every blemish and stray hair, smoothing out shadows, taking perfect faces and bodies to make them even more perfect, and those five great photos are whittled down to the one amazing, unearthly photo that you see on the cover of the magazine.
2) You Can't Compete With a Pro.
A professional photographer needs all that time and equipment and preparation to create one magical shot that makes you look amazing.
It's insane to think that you could do the same with a single snapshot using the low-resolution lens of a smart phone, and that you could get away with not editing that photo at all.
Nobody should be taking self-portraits and putting them online. Nobody. I don't care if you're Brad Pitt or Heidi Klum. Don't do it.
3) Every Image Counts, Especially the Bad Ones.
Photos are sticky. People expect every photo of a public figure to look good, if not great.
Snapshots taken with a smart phone will not look great. They may approach decent. Typically, they'll be bad, and knocking hard on Terrible's door.
People remember what sticks out. If they've seen 30 photos of you that look good, and one where you look like Frankenstein's monster, which photo do you think they'll remember most?
4) Over-Sharing Can Become a Habit.
When you're a public figure, there's a danger that you start feeling like everything you do is important and worthy of telling the press and public, and maybe taking a photo or video to capture the moment. You know, for history.
Maybe you start out snapping shots of sunsets and crowds. Then a couple group shots sneak in. Pretty soon, a politician starts taking and posting photos of himself whenever he meets somebody more famous than he is, and from there it isn't a leap to posting Facebook photos of him with the woman who makes him a soy latte at Starbucks every morning.
The power of photos works both ways.
The press and public are already wary of celebrities and public figures who are vain and self-centered. It's best not to feed that feeling by posting a lot of photos of yourself. Especially photos that will, inevitably, look bad anyway.