If there's one thing that annoys me more than almost anything else, it's the selfie stick. If you use one, I'm sorry, I really am, but I just can't stand them. Walking around packed central London streets is hard enough without people flapping about with creepy telescopic camera mounts. So when a company says they want to kill the selfie, and by virtue also the selfie stick, I'm all ears.

ElsiePic is a new app with an interesting premise. It's essentially a crowdsourcing app for finding a photographer in the vicinity who will take your photo so you don't have to resort to a selfie or give your phone to a stranger. A map shows where to find them, and tells you if they'll be using a proper camera or a smartphone to snap you. Once they've snapped an 'Elsie' of you, it will be sent to the app so you can download it and do with it as you wish.

The service isn't free, however, so you'll have to pay a small fee for the luxury. Photographers will earn money for their hard work, and presumably, ElsiePic will also get its cut. One curious aspect seems to be that the snappers don't come to you where you are, but rather you go to them. So they need to be in a location that you want to have your photo taken at for it to make sense.

I must say, I'm skeptical about this being a thing people will actually want to pay for, particularly when you can just ask a stranger to take a photo for you with minimal risk in most situations. I suppose a professional shot could be a plus for some people, but given how good the cameras on our phones have become I'm not sure it's necessary.

It's in beta at the moment, and you can download the unreleased ElsiePic app from the Play Store if you want to check it out. The listing description confuses 'whether' and 'weather,' which hurts my eyes, but I digress. If you give it a try, let us know in the comments what you make of it.

Source: PR Newswire, ElsiePic