Communications Major

In politics, image is king, and every politician knows it. So, it's surprising to see the president caught in a three-way selfie at Nelson Mandela's memorial service in South Africa, even if the other two people in the picture are the British and Danish Prime Ministers. The now iconic picture, snapped by an AFP photographer, speaks more than its thousand-word allotment — largely because Michelle Obama appears to be the only one showing any decorum.

From Justin Bieber to the Obamas and Madonna, the self-taken cameraphone photo – now a staple of Instagram and Twitter – has become one of the cultural markers of our time.

Let's proclaim 2013 the year of the "Ph" - since we all know no one ever looks back at these statements at the end of the year to see if anyone was right. But if we were the type of blogger to make big predictions (we are), here are three for 2013, and they all start with what should become the 27th letter in the English alphabet - the "Ph": Phablets, Photos (Vaporizing) and Photos (Printed for (Posterity).

No place is safe from the selfie, not even your grandmother's funeral. Yep, we remember being a kid (before Instagram) and can relate. Funerals can be boring affairs. But taking a selfie during one? And then posting it? Hoping this is a trend that's going nowhere.

A new study that spending too much time posting and sharing photographs may have detrimental effects on your real-life social interactions.

A couple of months ago there seemed to be a mini-backlash against us amateur mobile food photo junkies taking pics of our meals. This wasn't just at your classy carpaccio-serving joints (pictured at the left), it even happened at a McDonalds!

But it was a backlash against providing a hungry audience with a steady stream of "food porn" that never really went anywhere.

AP’s David Guttenfelder and Jean Lee, have begun uploading the first ever Instagram photos from inside North Korea — giving us an intimate glimpse at daily life inside the very closed off country.