Tech
Apple’s #ShotoniPhone contest is here to make your macro photos famous
Judges including Peter McKinnon and Anand Varma will decide whether your macro photos make it onto Apple billboards or into photo exhibitions.
Apple is asking you to get up close and personal. In its latest #ShotoniPhone contest, the company is looking for macro images taken on its iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max.
The contest is obviously meant to promote the Pro models of the iPhone 13, since they include a new ultrawide camera that is capable of macro photography. Apple designed the ultrawide camera with a wider f/1.8 aperture and a new autofocus system that has a minimum focus distance of two centimeters, making those super-detailed, close-up macro shots a lot easier.
If you haven’t gotten around to using macro mode on your iPhone 13 Pro , it can be a pretty fun and accessible way to get into a different type of photography. Especially since macro mode on iPhone 13 Pro is no longer just a sometimes irksome feature after Apple introduced a way to toggle it off in iOS 15.1.
Contest rules — The contest starts today and you can submit entries by posting on Twitter and Instagram using the hashtags #ShotoniPhone and #iPhonemacrochallenge. Apple has also opened up entries from Weibo with the #ShotoniPhone and #iPhonemacrochallenge tags. If you prefer to not subject your images to social media compression, you can submit your high-res images to shotoniphone@apple.com, but Apple has specific instructions on how to format your submission. Apple says that the photo submissions can be straight from the iPhone camera, edited with the Photos app, or even edited with third-party software.
Apple is going to pick 10 winners for its macro contest and pay them a licensing fee to use the winning images on different Apple channels, like its Newsroom, Instagram page, and other official Apple accounts. Apple says the winning images could also appear in digital campaigns, Apple Store locations, billboards, or in a public photo exhibition.
According to the terms of the contest, if you submit your photo, you’re agreeing to give Apple a royalty-free license to use your photo for up to a year, but you still retain your rights to the photo. For those curious about the exact details, the terms are at the bottom of this page.
Winners announced in April — To judge the photo submissions, Apple is enlisting the help of five industry experts, including popular photography YouTuber Peter McKinnon and National Geographic Explorer Anand Varma, along with five of its employees who have worked, in some way, on photography within Apple.
There are already a bunch of submissions on social media but you have until February 16 to upload your entries. Apple says they are planning to announce the winners sometime in April. While the #ShotoniPhone campaigns are self-promotional by nature, it’s still a good excuse to mess around with mobile macro photography, and if you ever wanted to see your photo plastered across a billboard on your way to work, well, this is your shot.
