Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Apple’s latest iPhone photo contest asks for your best Night mode images

Short winter days got you down? Apple’s latest iPhone photo contest will give you a reason to stay out late and celebrate the dark. The company has put up a call for entries looking for the best Night mode photos shot on iPhone 11, 11 Pro, or 11 Pro Max.

From now until January 29, submissions can be made via Instagram using the hashtags #ShotoniPhone and #NightmodeChallenge. Contestants are advised to note the model of phone used to produce the photo in the description. Images can also be submitted in high-resolution via email. See the original Apple blog post for details.

Austin Mann

Photos will be reviewed by a panel of 10 judges made up of a mix of working photographers and Apple employees. Five winning photos will be selected, with winners announced on March 4. The images will be displayed on Apple’s Instagram account and may be used online, in print ads, or on billboards, according to the company.

It makes sense that Apple would want to draw specific attention to Night mode, a critical new feature in the latest iPhones that allows for handheld long exposures. Night mode produces dramatically brighter, sharper, and more colorful images when the amount of light is insufficient for a standard exposure, and was a highlight of our iPhone 11 Pro review. In addition to granting exposure to the winning photographers, the photo contest will give Apple more content to advertise Night mode in future “Shot on iPhone” campaigns.

While Night mode comes on automatically when conditions call for it, Apple does offer a few tips for getting the best results. To let even more light in, tap on the yellow Night mode icon to gain access to the exposure time slider. Here, you can set a longer exposure than what the iPhone would select by default. To maintain sharpness for the longest exposures, prop your iPhone up or use a tripod adapter. This will ensure no motion blur gets into your image.

Apple’s isn’t the only iPhone photo contest. The independent iPhone Photography Awards has been running since the time of the original iPhone. If you’re looking for more phone photography tips and tricks, we spoke with a past winner about his techniques for getting award-winning photos.

Editors' Recommendations

Daven Mathies
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Daven is a contributing writer to the photography section. He has been with Digital Trends since 2016 and has been writing…
This is what an iPhone looks like after a year with no screen protector
Ceramic Shield on the iPhone 14 Pro, with light to show scratches.

Apple says its Ceramic Shield glass over the iPhone’s screen is “tougher than any smartphone glass,” but how accurate is this statement? The Digital Trends Mobile team has each been using one of the iPhone 14 series models for the last year and two of us haven’t put a separate screen protector on, while the third member of the team has. Here’s how the screens have held up — and what we think about Ceramic Shield.

Ceramic Shield was first introduced by Apple on the iPhone 12, and it claimed it went “beyond glass by adding a new high-temperature crystallization step that grows nano-ceramic crystals within the glass matrix, increasing drop performance by 4x.” Apple worked with Corning, the same company that makes Gorilla Glass, which is used on many smartphones from other manufacturers, to produce Ceramic Shield. It’s found on all iPhone 12, iPhone 13, iPhone 14, and now all iPhone 15 models.
iPhone 14 Pro — Andy Boxall
No light shows scratches on the iPhone 14 Pro's Ceramic Shield are invisible Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

Read more
I reviewed 20 phones in 2023. These are my 5 favorites
A person taking a photo with the Apple iPhone 15 Plus.

This has been a fantastic year for smartphones due to the sheer variety of great devices at all prices. In other words, if you wanted a brilliant new phone this year, it didn’t have to be a $1,000-plus flagship.

I’ve used and reviewed a great many phones over the past 12 months, but the following five have left the biggest impression to become what I consider the very best you can get.
iPhone 15 Plus
Apple iPhone 15 Plus Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

Read more
Why RCS for the iPhone is Apple’s biggest announcement of 2023
A person holding the Apple iPhone 15 Plus.

Hell has frozen over. On November 16, 2023, Apple made the very unexpected announcement that it was bringing support for RCS on the iPhone in 2024.

In 2022, Tim Cook himself said that he’d rather sell you an iPhone instead of ever bringing RCS support to the iPhone because he thought customer demand for RCS wasn’t there. Google has made numerous attempts to shame Apple over its pushback of RCS over the years.

Read more