Last week Apple announced the newest of the new gadgets with the iPad. I know a lot of you out there were thinking “Great, a big iPhone…” But as a photographer theres more to it, a lot more. The iPad is potentially a game changer in a good way for photographers and publications.

First off, when I look at the iPad I see a printing press. A portable, updatable, full color printing press. The kind photographers have been needing for years. Apple has the right idea with the E Book store which is a huge step up from the Kindle. On the iPad will have a good tangibleness. The pages actually flip and it looks and feels like a book. But instead of single photos you can have sequences or videos or moving info graphics because the pages can be dynamic.

Okay you get it. The iPad is a big full color dynamic content box.

Now the hard part: getting publishers invested in this new technology. NYT, Conde Nast, McGraw Hill, Oberlin, HarperCollins and Time are already looking to this device for displaying words as well as photos, videos and music. They are also seeing a brand new business model for their content. I’m not too excited about buying a magazine for $5 on the street if I haven’t read it before. But for $.99 no doubt I’d buy it just to try it out.

For the last few years I’ve been getting my news on the web, not from a physical paper or mag. That said I’d gladly pay for a New York Times subscription if they made the an iPad version that enhanced the paper into something better. And why not? Better looking photos, easier nav, a fully searchable paper with the ability to update on the fly. News comes in and you still read it as it happens instead of the next day. And no i don’t want a discount cause im not getting a print version. Or they because they are saving money in delivery. I’d be willing to pay more because its a superior product. Hoping every penny they are save from printing to go back into their content. You know, the entire reason people read publications.

An even bigger possibility lies with advertising. Media rich ad campaigns that can be dynamically changed years later to fit with the current ad campaign. Not the one from when the issue was first sent out. Also the potential billions of viewers would make ad agencies pretty happy.

In the end its the publishers that need to jump on it to  find a new business model taking print content into billions of sold content.

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Tim Lytvinenko is a photographer and web developer who lives and works in North Carolina.  His column, “Tuesday Tech Stuff” appears every other Tuesday.