shutter remotes for the win.

I recently went into my local camera shop to see what kind of infrared remotes they have for my camera (Canon Rebel T3), which does not have infrared capabilities that allow a shutter remote to connect to it. They showed me an awesome one with an attachment to the external flash slot that plugs into the side of the camera, with a remote that then works with the reciever to activate the shutter. I was ready for them to bag it for me when I remembered to ask for the price, and was shocked to hear that it was "ninety nine mam". Um, no.So, like all expensive things that I know I can get somewhere else, I visited amazon and stumbled on this infrared receiver and remote by JR. Though the product was rated 4.5 stars overall, I read through the reviews and saw some really horrible one stars. I made an executive decision despite those reviews to trust the good reviews and the price and just go with it. It arrived two days later and I could not be happier with how well it performs and how simple it is to take on + off and use. So while it's annoying that I can't just use a remote without the hassle of a receiver, this is the best possible solution.Then, for my birthday, I asked for an iphone shutter remote, because while I love my DSLR, my iphone is always with me and probably takes about 80% of all of my daily photos (working on decreasing that number significantly, but in the meantime...). I saw this shutter remote by Muku on amazon, and when I googled it to see if anyone had any reviews up (because I feel like this is a fairly new concept with not a lot of competition yet) I saw that Elsie of ABM actually owns it and wrote a post about how much she loves it. So if I wasn't sold before, I definitely was after that.This remote, like the receiver + remote combo for my canon, makes life so much easier, and makes taking photos so much fun because there are more opportunities to get creative. The iphone one is so tiny and great for parties and hang outs where everyone wants to be in the same picture, or for when Max doesn't want to be photographed (which is sneaky, but that's almost all the time now so I have to work around him somehow!) The canon remote has been useful for a number of blog photographs and to take higher quality portraits. To see my remotes in action, check out the photos in this post (canon) and this post (iphone).