May 31, 2013: For the staff photographers of the Chicago Sun-Times, this day was one of the most unpleasant, since they all received a notice of dismissal. Management has decided to cut 28 full-time photographers, replacing them with journalists who will be retrained and start using iPhones to take photos on their own.
The move signaled declining demand in the newspaper industry and opened up a growing opportunity for the iPhone to replace professional cameras.
Such a large-scale layoff at the Chicago Sun-Times caused discontent not only for the photographers themselves, but also for journalists who were ordered to attend an iPhone photography training in order to learn how to take pictures and create videos on their own.
Photojournalism with iPhone
Improvements in performance by mid-2013, following the release of the iPhone 5 with its 8-megapixel iSight camera, made photojournalism a reality. Although the quality of the pictures could not be compared with a professional digital camera, they turned out quite good for printing on the pages of the publication.
In addition, many applications were created in the App Store that allow you to edit photos, which also increased the popularity of the iPhone. Since 2013, the iPhone has been actively used for filming in news reports. Journalists especially appreciated the ability to upload pictures directly to the newspaper’s account through a mobile application.
Apple has tried to provide creative developers with convenient and powerful professional photo editing tools. By 2013, Apple was actively promoting the iPhone camera as a tool for aspiring photographers, which it continues to do today with its successful Shot on iPhone promotion.
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