The author of the article treats the choice of what to a photograph as a dichotomy, either you takes selfies or you take photographs of the world around you, and warns that taking selfies is not only " wrong" but may result in a serious personalty disorder. Instead, she encourages people to photograph outward. Of course I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that you could do both (or neither). In her waterfall example, you could take a selfie with the waterfall behind you, and then switch the camera setting to the camera on the back of the phone and take a photo of the waterfall itself. As one poster mentioned above, you really don't need to take a picture of the waterfall itself though because there are a million photographs of it online. It's not like it is a new discovery. You are probably not an explorer in the Amazon or anything. The selfie of you with the waterfall behind you, however, is unique, and I think that is probably what gives it some value. I might suggest that, in lieu of or after you have taken your selfie, if you would just put your goddamn phone down for five minutes, and take in the wonder and beauty of the waterfall, enjoying the spiritual experience of its existence, you might be better off in the both the short and long run. So that's a little counterpoint to the author's thesis.
I never take selfies, largely because I don't use the camera in my phone, and also possibly because I am not much to look at. Nobody wants, much less needs, to see my smiling face with a waterfall behind me. I do take photographs of metaphorical waterfalls, because I think most of the photographs of them online are not all that great, and because I have a different idea about how they should be portrayed. I also enjoy working in the darkroom for reasons which are incomprehensible.