There has recently been a great shift in the world of photography. Most photographs are taken not from a “traditional” camera. Now 60 percent are taken from portable phones equipped with a camera. What is more, everyone is constantly uploading pictures on social networks like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Many fear that this new way of using camera phones will threaten the use of digital cameras and go on to even change the whole business of photography. Due to this rapid change that came with our increasingly digitalizing world, some question whether they should perceive this change as a negative or rather, embrace it as a new kind of art.

In my opinion, this shift and acceptance of photographs taken from cell phone cameras is rather positive. Naturally, this way of taking pictures will not replace the traditional way of using a DSLR or other digital camera, as people will always desire to have the high quality and skills of the professional photographers to immortalize their most valued moments.

Some fear that our society seems ready to replace optical quality of the digital cameras with the convenience of the cell phone ones, which now provide much more facility. People berate this replacement of “real” photography with the poor optical quality produced by camera phones, which still seem to be preferred by many, due to their relatively low cost and handiness.

The other big problem regarding the use of cell phone cameras is that now everyone can consider themselves as photographers, thus rendering the frontier between professional and amateur photographers narrower. Professionals and experienced photographers would have no other options than to lower the price of their business for the sake of keeping a job that beforehand used to be regarded as exclusive but now has become common.

However, in many ways this sudden shift in photography is rather beneficial and appropriate to our society, as it goes along the conventions of our modern world.  Our world has come to increasingly rely on technology to facilitate work and enable simplicity and expediency. More pictures have been taken in this year alone than in the whole 1800s. This change is noted due to the developed power that our technology has gained. Our cell phone cameras no longer contain 1.3 mega pixels and low quality images and light, but instead can take photographs of 8 mega pixels size. For example, the Apple’s iPhone 4s has a new lens, digital focus, LED flash and can even take HD video.

What is more, cell phone cameras have come to include even more features than the traditional digital cameras have, such as the iPhone’s front camera, which makes self-portraits much easier to take. Another benefit is that the cameraphone is simply something that most people have now. People generally will seek to have an electronic device that can perform most of the available functions, such as taking pictures. It becomes instantly cheaper for people to use something they already have rather than to spend hundreds of dollars on a separate digital camera, which now has anyway a similar picture quality as the one of camera phones.

Cameraphones are also valuable because they enable people to share their photos through social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Instagram more rapidly. Facebook is currently one of the largest online photo libraries, storing 140 billion pictures—uploading 300 million photos per month or 3,500 photos every second. Cameraphone pictures posted on social media are simply a new form of photography.

Despite the improving quality of cameraphones, photographers most certainly stay in demand as their photographs and skills cannot be bested easily. Special events like marriages and other festivities will always take professional photographers—it gives the event classiness and style. Cameraphone pictures are not replacing the digital photos, they are just enabling people to take pictures that may not have necessarily been taken in the past. This unavoidable change should be viewed as something positive that is revolutionizing the domain of photography as it is adding on to it.