why comms people need a camera in their pocket

By Dan Slee

It’s clear that new web technologies are revolutionising the job of the communications officer.

But they’re also changing how we use photography too.

Back in the day freelance photography was commissioned for every eventuality. The launch event, the

new building or the new product all came with a photography budget.

But in times of shrinking budgets that world has changed.

There’s also been a perfect storm as social media and better mobile phones has opened-up access to half decent cameras.

I was struck by an excellent post by Matt Murray recently.

Matt was someone I worked with, a photography geek who coveted rare Eastern European cameras the way that stamp collectors covet Penny Blacks.

Now a web officer in his native Brisbane Australia he blogs very well about mobile camera apps. 

In a recent post he spoke of how French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1973 was life was fluid and sometimes the pictures disappear unless you were there to grab the moment. In his words: ‘Life is once forever.’

The comms professional now needs to have a good web-enabled iphone or smartphone in their pocket with a decent camera.

Why?

So they can have the ability to post content to Facebook, Twitter or other profiles.

Candid pictures work. Candid pictures in real-time work really well.

I took four points from Matt's post:

• Your mobile now has a legitimately serious camera stuck in it.
• It’s not the camera it’s the person taking the picture.
• The best camera is the one in your pocket.
• People are more candid around smartphones than they are around an SLR.

Nothing replaces the commissioned shot for something that absolutely needs to hit the spot for marketing or make a front page news picture.

But with the rise of the social web isn’t it time that every comms officer came with a smartphone?

Does your organisation?

Picture credit

Comments

[John Popham]

Sometimes I wonder "does that point really need making?" and then I remember how many people are still locked into old ways of doing things. And you wouldn't believe the numbers of people I come across who are unaware, or unwilling to believe, that their smartphone can take quality photos.

Oh, and if you're taking video on an iPhone, please hold it in landscape mode. I still see loads of people shooting video with their iPhones held in portrait mode which produces long thin videos which look like they are shot through a gap in a fence.