Planet-Saving Selfies

What if we all agreed to stop taking the same photo of the Taj Mahal 40,000 times a day?

If you’ve ever stood at any famous lookout - Machu Picchu at sunrise, the Twelve Apostles, the Eiffel Tower, take your pick - you’ve watched hundreds of us line up for the same shot. We deploy everything from pro cameras to phones of various qualities, and we all go home with a nearly identical gallery. You can’t blame anyone: people want proof that they stood there, wind in their hair, jet lag in their eyes. But the result is an ocean of the same (and not always pixel-perfect) pictures.

Here’s the pitch. Your phone already recognises your face, your friends, your cat, and the receipt you need for taxes. Why not let it handle the thousands of landmark portraits too? You arrive at a bucket-list location, your GPS confirms it, and your phone politely suggests: “We’ve got you. Here’s the signature shot, ready to brag.” It grabs one of ten (maybe twenty, let’s not get radical) curated world-class photos of this location, stitches your grinning group into it, and hands you a digitally signed “I was there” certificate. No line, no awkward angle, no arguing with the weather.

Yes, I hear the purists: “But I need my original shot.” Do you? Your camera roll already contains fifty nearly identical takes of the Grand Canyon because the first forty-nine didn’t quite vibe. Meanwhile, data centres are busy storing endless copies of the same blue-domed church in Santorini. Saving even a sliver of that redundant storage would save energy, costs, and at least one overworked server somewhere in North Virginia.

The kicker? You still get memories that feel personal. Imagine comparing notes with friends and realising you all share the same base photo, but each version swaps in your outfit, your crew, and that suspicious gelato. It’s like trading cards, but for travel bragging rights, and if someone insists they climbed Mount Fuji without leaving the couch, the digital signature calls their bluff.

Maybe we won’t stop taking photos entirely. Humans love pressing that button. But trimming the duplicate shots? That might just give the planet, and our storage plans, a much-needed breather.