May 31, 2013: The Chicago Sun-Times fires all 28 of its photographers, with the goal of training its staff to shoot photos using iPhones instead. Pulitzer Prize winner John H. White is among those who lose their jobs.
The move is significant not just because of what it says about the declining newspaper industry. It also spotlights the iPhone’s growing acceptance as a professional camera.
That last few years have seen plenty of grief-stricken editors and photographers deliver eulogies about the craft of photojournalism. Others hang on hoping for changes in an industry that has seen massive layoffs and reduced pay for freelancers.
The team behind a startup platform called ViewFind, not only understands the pain of an entire industry, it’s trying to cancel the funeral.
They were visiting colleges and he wanted it to be a “daddy-daughter” weekend. But the prolific, award-winning photographer gets anxious when he is not creating, so there was a point in the trip when he commandeered her iPhone, downloaded Hipstamatic and started making pictures.
As soon as he returned home, he purchased his own iPhone and it wasn’t long before the news photographer began making pictures for the first time that were truly about him.
His Instagram feed, a body of street photography images that grows larger by the day, has more than 19,000 followers. He loves how Instagram allows him to send pictures directly to people waiting and wanting to see them.
