Apple Wants You to Share Your Best Night Mode Photos in New Challenge

Apple is ushering in the new year with another Shot on iPhone challenge, but this time with a twist, inviting users to share their best iPhone Night Mode photos as a way to promote the feature on the new iPhone 11.

This means that unlike last year’s Shot on iPhone challenge, which was technically open to photos taken with any current iPhone camera, this year Apple will only be accepting entries taken with the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max — the only models that feature the new Night Mode technology. This isn’t the first time Apple has run a challenge to feature a specific iPhone model or feature, however, with a fall 2018 Shot on iPhone XR campaign that was intended to show off how capable Apple’s lower-priced iPhone was at a time when many assumed that the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max were inherently superior.

Apple’s new Night Mode Photo Challenge kicks off today and runs through January 29, and as in prior years, Apple has selected a panel of ten judges, comprised of Apple employees and independent photographers, to evaluate all submissions and pick the “most stunning Night mode shots from users around the world.”

The five winning photos are expected to be announced on March 4, and will be posted in a gallery on Apple’s Newsroom and on its Instagram feed, and may also appear in digital campaigns, at Apple Stores, on billboards, or in a third-party photo exhibition.

In the announcement, Apple also offers some tips for taking great Night mode shots, letting users know how to identify when they’re shooting with Night mode enabled, how to adjust the Night mode capture time manually, and also suggesting that users prop up their iPhone or employ a tripod for ultra-dark shots.

The Judges

The judges from inside Apple’s ranks include the same team from last year, made up of Phil Schiller, Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing along with Kaiann Drance the VP of Worldwide Marketing who took the stage last fall to debut the iPhone 11, Jon McCormack, Apple’s VP of Camera and Photos and a published photographer in his own right, Arem Duplessis, director of photography for Apple’s marketing team, and Brooks Kraft who worked as a contributing photographer for TIME magazine before joining Apple.

The five independent judges are Malin Fezehai, a New York-based photographer who has shot for The New York Times, TIME, Malala Fund, and the United Nations, Tyler Mitchell, an avant-garde and fashion photographer who works out of Brooklyn, London-based photographer Sarah Lee who has worked for the Guardian and Observer specializing in portraiture, features, and the Arts, and Alexvi Li , a Chinese photographer who has received awards for numerous projects shot exclusively on the iPhone.

How to Enter

Users can enter the challenge simply by sharing their Night mode photos on Instagram and/or Twitter using the hashtags #ShotoniPhone and #NightmodeChallenge, and should note which iPhone model was used to capture the image in the caption. Users who would prefer not to post their photos publicly can also submit them via email to shotoniphone@apple.com. Photos can be submitted straight from the camera or edited using Apple’s Photos app or any third-party editing software.

Following last year’s controversy over how it would credit or compensate photographers, Apple has made this time around to clearly state that it will pay a licensing fee to the five winning photographers for its use of their photos on its marketing channels, and that photographers will retain all rights to their photographs, but in exchange for the licensing fee will grant Apple a one-year “royalty-free, worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive license” to use the winning photos, including commercial use. Full contest rules can be found on Apple’s website.