A few months ago I was with a friend in an art museum that explicitly stated: “No photographs.” My friend may not have planned on taking pictures in the first place, but he happened to have his new camera phone with him. How could he resist? In a move that looked like he was checking for messages, he took a shot, e-mailed it to a buddy in California, and then put his phone back in his shirt pocket, clearly enjoying his undercover prank.

Increasing numbers of cell-phone owners will be upgrading to camera phones, and they will be shooting and e-mailing photographs in unpredictable ways. Already these visual communication devices are influencing the pictures we take and the pictures we see, and will surely impact our lives as individuals, consumers and professionals.

Consider these factors:
1) The camera phone is both a communications device and a visual recording device.
2) It is light and tiny; it’s as portable—and increasingly indispensable—as your wallet, and is therefore always with you.
3) By pressing a few buttons, you can transmit—i.e., publish— your image (and with some phones your video clip) to anyone or any group on the planet who has access to the Internet.
4) The image is transmitted within a few seconds.
5) The image can be accompanied by a simultaneous text and/or voice message.

The individual features of camera phones are not so radical: each capability can be accomplished with some other device. Instead, it is the combination of features—the functions, size, portability, speed, ease-of-use and ubiquitous nature—that creates the recipe for change.

Surreptitious picture taking
Picture taking has been prohibited for years in all sorts of places, for all sorts of reasons: privacy, copyright infringement, legal issues and safety. In this age of increased paranoia, the banning has reached new extremes. For example, New York City Transit has proposed a ban on unauthorized photography in the city’s subways and buses. What was once innocent tourist snapping has become a suspicious potential terrorist activity.

With a camera phone, one can easily take a picture without anybody noticing, and then transmit the image instantaneously. This has prompted camera-phone bans by institutions that are addressing not-so-innocent surreptitious activities. Health clubs throughout the United States are prohibiting camera phones in locker rooms. Technology companies that are fearful of industrial espionage are taking measures to curtail camera-phone usage. In Japan, where phone image quality is superior, some bookstore visitors are sneaking pictures of magazine pages in a new form of stealing called “digital shoplifting.” Many courtrooms are not allowing camera phones for fear of endangering undercover officers, among others. Celebrities are afraid that guests will bring camera phones to parties and instantly publish pictures to the public. The list goes on and on.

Will the camera phone’s capabilities, combined with the growing tendency to restrict picture taking, make people more rebellious, sneaking shots for the sake of defying authority? And then will such seemingly benign activities accelerate the dangers that the bans were intended to stop?

The incidental photojournalist
An important turning point in the history of journalism was the amateur videotaping of the police beating of Rodney King. This video was taken when someone happened to have a video camera, and was at the right (and horrific) place at the right time. The highest priority of the news media is speed: the winner is the one who can bring the story to the public the fastest. In recent years we have seen numerous examples of video and pictures being taken by “real” people who have sent their photos and footage to media outlets. Especially in the case of terrorist activities, photojournalists cannot always be on the scene because no one knows where “the scene” will be next. New York? Madrid? Saudi Arabia?

The camera phone combines the two most important aspects of breaking news: having someone on the scene as the drama is unfolding, and being able to broadcast the imagery immediately to the widest possible audience.

Think of this from the networks’ point of view: to be competitive, they must have real-time access to pictures from every newsworthy event. Often this access is in the form of video screengrabs from another news agency (e.g., Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based news network), and there is a fee for the footage.

But what does a picture cost when it comes from the guy on the street with a camera phone? Already, networks are asking for content from viewers. (http://us.cnn.com/feedback/tips/. Scroll right to find “send a digital image to CNN.”) Do the networks get these visual submissions for free, and if so, does it reduce their news budget? Will images have copyright protection? What does this mean for the professional photojournalist?