The State of Mobile Photography

Mobile photography is changing the game, and not just for everyday consumers. Mobile phone cameras have been used for professional photoshoots, for movies, and for journalism. That got me thinking about the path we are on, so I reached out to tech journalist Andy Ihnatko to chat about where the mobile photography world may be headed.

Andy was the tech columnist for the Chicago Sun Times, and is a regular podcaster. He’s a co-host of my favorite tech podcast, MacBreak Weekly (which you can find on Leo Laporte’s TWiT Network), one of the hosts of the Material podcast on Relay.FM, and a regular guest on Jason Snell’s The Incomparable Podcast. All of that makes him a great choice for this chat, but Andy is also a photographer. He is the only person I know of that regularly goes to the Boston Public Library, a beautiful building by the way, or on a walk around Boston, with multiple phones / cameras in his pockets. He is exactly the right person for this show.

It’s been said that the best camera is the one you have with you. Hmmmm. OK, Then I need to find a way to keep a Canon 1DX Mark II in my pocket. Obviously that won’t happen, but if Canon wants to send me one so I can try, I’d be ok with it. That saying does have a point though. When the iPhone was first announced it started something amazing, the ability to always have a camera with you. Yeah, we had Point-n-Shoots already, but they were still big enough to have wrist straps. Keeping a camera, a pretty damn good camera, in your pocket meant more people taking pictures, more people trying to create art, and more people trying to visually explain the world around them. Regular people became real-time photojournalists, and as a byproduct, more photojournalists became unemployed. Progress happens, and it has consequences.

As a photographer I have been thinking about this a lot lately. How has the tech industry changed photography? How are regular people changing the game, and how are professional photographers adapting, or not? Two years ago we went on a family trip to Italy and I didn’t take my camera, or at least not my “real” camera. I went on a trip to Italy with just an iPhone and an Olloclip! I just didn’t want to be that dad with the camera and tripod that interrupts the trip because I want a shot, and ya know what? It worked out fine. Do I wish I’d taken the Canon? Not really. Don’t get me wrong, there were moments I would have paid to have someone bring it to me, but in the end I got pictures I was happy with, and more importantly I experienced Italy with my family. It worked well enough that last year when we to France I did the same thing.

When it comes to the world of photography, change seems to happen slowly. We are restricted by the realities of the world around us, and by the physics of light and tech. Except for a few specific situations, like the concert photography that I do where I need good low performance and a fast shutter speed, mobile photography has all but killed the point-n-shoot market. How will this trend change things moving forward?

Join tech journalist and photographer Andy Ihnatko and me as we take a look at how mobile photography is changing what happens Behind the Shot.

Connect with Andy

Website: Ihnatko’s Celestial Waste of Bandwidth
Facebook: @ihnatko
Instagram: @ihnatko
Twitter: @ihnatko

Andy on Podcasts

MacBreak Weekly on the TWiT Network
The Material Podcast on Relay.FM
The Incomparable Podcast with Jason Snell