The above image was created on my iphone 4 using a bunch of processing ‘apps’ I downloaded to the phone. One added a dreamy blur effect; another added the vignetting, another the color shift. The original was shot using an app that shoots HDR! I’ve been exploring the potential that this 5 megapixel camera and the apps have. It’s a deviation from my normal landscape, nature and travel photography in some ways, but many of my subjects are still the same – just treating them a little differently. I’ve been inspired by many friends and colleagues also doing this in an iphoneography group I belong to. What I see being produced by this group blows me away! The energy that is flowing through this group is amazing – supportive, encouraging, helpful.

Yes, it’s ‘only’ an iphone, but you can create a 9×12 at 240 dpi. Pro photographer and artist Dan Burkholder has stitched together over 128 iphone images and produced some incredibly complex-layered and texture images as you’ll see on his website, and is teaching a class in iPhone artistry at Maine Media Workshops next summer. It’s clearly another form of artistic expression. I am always looking for ways to stretch my vision and explore new ways to see. Many times this sort of visual exercise help me see more clearly in other areas of my photography – my ‘straight’ images.

One thing I know; I always have my phone with me, whereas there are times when it’s just not feasible to have my 35mm kit, and I always want to be able to record a moment that I see that I like. It’s about being in the moment, seeing the moment, the light, and as Sam Abell once said, “making the moment stay” by recording it. No matter what tool you have available to you. And well, if you can take it beyond that with some creative processing, even better! Will it replace my big cameras? Not likely – but it’s sure firing my creative synapses!