New York Times strikes controversy with Instagram cover photo

The New York Times has decided to use an Instagram photo taken with an iPhone for the cover of its newspaper.

The New York Times is one of the most popular newspapers in the United States. The people in charge of the cover have started a controversy among photojournalists because they have decided to use a photo captured with an iPhone on the front page.

Photojournalists spend a lot of time and money on their gear. They want to take that perfect shot that would be usable in a newspaper and the final goal is to make it to the cover. However, photographer Nick Laham has accomplished something that very few people managed to achieve.

The New York Times’ Sunday edition featured an Instagram cover photo

NYT’s Sunday edition features a portrait of Alex Rodriguez, a baseball player for the New York Yankees. The image has also been posted on Instagram and it has been edited with the popular photo-editing tool.

According to Laham, he did not have enough time to take studio photos of the players. There were a lot of other photographers waiting to snap portraits of the New York Yankees team and Laham decided to keep it as simple as possible.

He did use a DSLR to capture the players’ portraits, but the iPhone and Instagram prevailed in the end.

A lot of photojournalists have claimed that this may be the end of professional photography. Smartphones are already chewing off impressive numbers of digital cameras’ market share. NYT’s actions may led people to think that they can take professional-looking photos with cheap smartphones and mobile editing tools.

However, others have said that such things have not happened too often. Smartphones have a long way to go until they can reach the image quality levels of compact cameras so it may be a while until they can equal DSLRs.

Alex Rodriguez and other New York Yankees baseball players posed in front of an iPhone

Nick Laham has also revealed more portraits on his blog taken on the same day with the same gear. CC Sabathia, Mariano Rivera, Raúl Ibañez and others have also had their portraits captured with an iPhone, while the photographer has applied some Instagram filters to make it all better.