Cell phones allow us to be forever connected. With the advent of the camera phone we can now see something, shoot it and share it with the world faster than ever before. This fast-paced interconnected world is saturated with digital images. From Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Tumblr and the like, a constant stream of photos are being shared.
News organizations have been slow to integrate cellphone photography into their operations, but as technology advances and cameras get smaller and better surely we will see future photojournalist carrying a single hand-held device that does the work of a camera, laptop and phone.
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| The School of Nursing's location on the second floor of Herritage Hall opened in 2010. |
Some photojournalists are doing it already, Ben Lowy is an adamant supporter of cell phone photography and has had work featured in The Newyorker, Newsweek, Time and The New York Times. I think he put it best when he said: "Small mobile phone cameras are innocuous and enable a far greater intimacy with a subject... allowed me to transmit images from the field updating my blog- no middle man, no publisher." (link)
I found these aspects of cell phone photography to hold true during a recent tour of the registered nurse training lab at Owens Community College. I was able to take photos quickly and painlessly without getting that deer-in-headlights look that is so common when photographing people.
Of course the limitations are still there, with almost all current cameras in cell phones you have no control over the iso, aperture and shutterspeed along with very limited control over focus. This is the trade off for having a camera ready for action in a split second. But, if the pace of technological progress of the 21st century continues, we should see huge advancements in camera phone tech in the upcoming years. It will be interesting to see how this changes the profession of photojournalism.
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| Patricia Zenner demonstrates the use of one of the school's Alaris IV infusion pumps. Zenner is the coordinator of the Nursing Skills Lab at Owens Community College where students work in a clinical environment with various interactive and anatomically correct models of humans. |
