I must confess that up until somewhat recently, the very word “iPhoneography” kind of made me cringe. I mean, I know it’s possible and acceptable to capture photographic moments with a camera phone these days and I’ve actually encouraged it for folks who might want to take photos but don’t happen to have a “real” camera handy. But to make a whole new “ography” out of it??? Hmmm… I don’t know about that. There are tumblrs and Flickr groups, Twitter feeds, forums, online communities, blogs, tutorials, tips, and Facebook pages all dedicated to iPhoneography. Really? It’s just a CAMERA PHONE, for crying out loud!
But then something changed. I got an iPhone 4S about a month and a half ago. I shall now leap to the defense of the truly-not-bad camera function that lurks within my beloved iPhone. Mind you, my iPhone camera will never, ever, EVER replace my Nikon DSLRs, but what a handy tool to have right there in my pocket pretty much ALL the time! I’d been contemplating getting a small pocket-size point-and-shoot camera for those times when I’d like to capture a moment but hauling the DSLR gear around isn’t practical or desirable. But now I don’t I need to! Yay!
Hey, this iPhone thing has an 8 megapixel camera! EIGHT!! My first “high end” point-and-shoot camera, purchased a mere 6 years ago, had only FIVE megapixels and it got me through an awful lot of travel photography with fairly good results. With 8 megapixels, you should be able to print up to 20×30-inch prints with pretty good quality. That’s not bad for an in-phone camera.
What makes the iPhone camera totally cool (and in some ways more FUN than a “regular” camera) is the apps. The phone comes with a basic Camera app, but you really need to download some other apps to take full advantage of the iPhone’s camera function. I’m not going to go into detail here since I’ve just begun to explore the world of iPhonography myself and since a lot of my readers might not have iPhones and don’t really care. However, if you DO have an iPhone, just go to the App Store, do a search for “Photography” and check out the myriad of photography apps at your fingertips. I fear I’ve gone a bit overboard in downloading “camera replacement” apps for my iPhone, however. (Let’s chalk it up to “research”). I currently have no fewer than eight of these apps on my iPhone and am busy experimenting with them all to determine which one(s) work best for me.
So… now I will show you some fun things I’ve done with the camera function of my iPhone + various apps. If I was a GOOD iPhoneographer (which I certainly do not claim to be), I would be able to tell you exactly what app I used for each photo and exactly what effects/filters/frames/etc. I applied, but, with the exception of the first photo below, I haven’t really kept track. I’ll try to do that for future iPhone photo posts.
I took the first image below with my iPhone at the Denver Zoo’s Tropical Discovery exhibit this past week. My iPhone came in mighty handy at this particular exhibit because, with its handy dandy little F2.4 lens, it actually handles low-light situations quite a bit better than my “real” cameras/lenses do. I then added an effect called More Wang and a frame called Freshman with the Camera Awesome app. I think this one turned out exceptionally awesome-ly.
The next one is my BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse veggie burger and fries with some sort of vintage/retro effect applied. These type of effects that make your photos look like you took them with your Kodak Instamatic back in the 70s are especially popular with Instagram and Hipstamatic users. I find it amusing that we’ve come SO far in digital photography that we can now make our photos look crappy on purpose.
The following photo of the most beautiful cat in the world has a texture of some sort applied, as well as a frame of some sort. Don’t ask me what, but… isn’t she beautiful????!!!!
I’m not sure exactly what I did to the photo below, but it turned out looking pretty cool:
And finally, the following distorted images, both from my “Paris” archive, were produced with a clever little app called Tiny Planets. You can take a new image or render an old image into the “tiny planet” format. I’m having a lot of fun with this one.
So… that is all I have to say about the wonderful world of “iPhoneography” at the moment. Look for future posts about other interesting iPhoneography-related info as well as new iPhoneography pics from time to time. If you don’t have an iPhone, feel free to ignore. But you should really get one. 
(Please note that this blog post refers to iPhoneography, NOT iPadography. If you have an iPad, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don’t use it as a camera in public. You’ll just look SILLY).
And now for the final Colorado wildflower in this year’s Countdown to Spring series:
