The iPhone is more than a phone and much more than just a camera. It can do things that are impossible to do on a “real” camera, like effortlessly stitch together panoramas and instantly share pictures worldwide.

These creative possibilities were explored by Jack Davis in “iPhoneography: The New Frontier of Creative Photography,” a free seminar at Photoshop World in Washington, DC. Davis is an award-winning photographer and the author of the Photoshop Wow books. In an hour-long free talk, he shared the dizzying number of iPhone apps he uses. Here are his favorites:

Snapseed – Give your photos a grunge look, put them in interesting frames and make them look like old film. The iPad version of this app is gorgeous.

ProHDR – There are enough adjustment tools in this app to produce HDR that doesn’t look totally fake.

Photo fx (Tiffen) – For $2.99 you get a lot of the tools and adjustments of the desktop Tiffen program which costs hundreds of dollars.

PhotoSync – Wirelessly transfer photos between your computer, iPhone and iPad.

Photo Sender – This app allows more flexibility in sending images from your iPhone to your computer, email and social media, including the ability to send lots of images all at once.

FastCamera – Indulge your inner sports photographer and shoot hundreds of images a minute.

360 Panorama – I remember the old days (just a couple years ago) when shooting panoramas required a DSLR, a tripod and an expert knowledge of Photoshop. Instead, let this 99-cent app do it for you!

You Gotta See This! – Cheesy, but fun, this app lets you create a collage of images, as if you scattered a stack of Polaroids on a table and took a picture. Again, another complicated Photoshop task now done with a click.

King Camera - This app bills itself as a replacement for your big camera. We’ll see.

Big Lens – Another camera replacement, this app does nice depth of field shots.

SlowShutter – I love this app and have written about it before. It’s great for photos that show movement.

Instagram – You can’t talk about iPhone photo apps without mentioning this social media app.

Olloclip 3-in-1 Lens - This is actually a piece of hardware, a little lens to get fisheye, wide angle and macro shots.

This is just a sample of what Jack Davis uses. His iPhone and iPad were crowded with dozens of more apps. All these great and easy ways to create beautiful imagery demonstrate the fun of iPhoneography.

Photos can lie. This one certainly does. While it looks like a picture of a lonely and mysterious scene, the night was anything but. I stepped away from friends for a moment to snap this iPhone pic. To the right was a packed bar blaring pop music into the night.

It’s an Instagram pic, using the Inkwell filter and the super-sexy radial focus tool. The focus is on the figure in the background and the rest is blurred out a bit, which I think adds to the mystery. The photo was also featured on DCist.

It was a beautifully mild spring morning – a perfect day to bike to work. Here a bike commuter travels south on 14th Street toward Luther Place Memorial Church.

This is an iPhone pic, modified by Instagram. It also appeared in DCist: Out and About: Weekend Picks.

Took this within minutes of trying out Slow Shutter - and it was the DCist Photo of the Day!

I heard about Slow Shutter from James Campbell, an iPhoneographer who I’m pretty sure has every iPhone photo app ever created. I was fascinated by the blurry, abstract long exposures that he had created with it.

I have a “real” camera, a Canon DSLR, that I could use to get long exposures. I’ve done so before, but it’s always a bit of trial and error, since I don’t create long exposures that often.

Slow Shutter and it's rather cryptic controls

Slow Shutter has enabled me to get long exposures just with a click – the app is that easy. I downloaded it, played it with a bit (the controls are little cryptic), then went out into the street. I wanted a photo of cabs going by.

But the cabs weren’t going fast enough – they didn’t have the long lines I wanted. So, I went to another corner and waited for the stoplight to change. Taxis took off and I got my shot.

I ran the photo through Slow Shutter, adjusting the “freeze” until it was dreamy, blurry and ghostlike while still retaining enough of the scene to make it identifiable.

Then I used Instagram (best iPhone photo app ever) to crop it to a square, Polaroid format using the X-Pro II filter. The filter also vignetted the photo, something I always like.

You can do a lot with these Slow Shutter preferences.

My dreamy cab shot made the DCist Photo of the Day. It’s one of those common urban scenes but with a slightly different, mysterious perspective.

Some photographers might look at Slow Shutter and say, “That’s cheating.”

My knowledge of f-stops and exposure times is, at best, limited. Just a few years ago you’d need fancy equipment, technical knowhow and darkroom experience to get such a shot. Now it can be done with just a click.

But what can’t be duplicated by technology is a good eye. Apps like Slow Shutter just make it easier for photographers to achieve their vision.

And like a good iPhone app, it’s also a lot of fun.

This is a photo of the Sears Tower from the LEGO Architecture: Towering Ambition at the National Building Museum. It’s a small exhibit but strangely fascinating, with iconic buildings reproduced in LEGOS.

A ship in harbor is safe — but that is not what ships are built for.
- John A. Shedd

2011 was the year I decided that a camera in a bag was a dead camera. Our photographic tools (DSLRs, point-and-shoots, iPhones) are designed to be used. That’s where they’re built for.

I’m also fortunate/cursed to live in interesting times, as protests descend upon Washington. I know the city well and can get just about anywhere quickly by walking or biking.

So, I decided that I would use my Canon T2i and iPhone 4 to document political protests, art events, food and just interesting things I saw in the city.

Protests

One of my favorite photos of the year was from an OccupyDC protest:

While I took a lot of other pictures of this Key Bridge march, the Amaro filter in Instagram gave this picture a very warm 1970s-style. Ironically, it was freezing that day and the sun had just emerged for a couple minutes late in the day.

This “hippie protester” was part of the OccupyDC movement. Most groups come to Washington, march around, and leave. These people stayed. They turned McPherson Square into a squalid encampment and have disrupted the lives of the 99% (the people they claim to represent) by continually blocking traffic during rush hour.

The turning point for me came a month later, during their barn raising in McPherson Square. It was a small, silly event:

If you added up all the protesters, police, media and tourists, there couldn’t be more than a couple hundred people involved. But CNN covered it as if it was some sort of mass insurrection. A stand-off with police is always good TV.

Another way the media got things wrong was a laughable article on the McPherson Square camp as a model of new urbanism. The piece is filled with so many factual mistakes and academic-speak that I thought it was a parody. The thesis that the Occupy movement has “activated” the park can be demolished by actually visiting the camp, which is nothing but muddy tents and masked anarchists.

OccupyDC, can’t you come up with something more modern than marching in the streets like 1930s strikers? As an example of effective and innovative political action, check out DC Flag Day, where residents demonstrated their love of the city.

This woman is rocking the red heels as she advocates for DC statehood.

Art

Protesters could learn a lot from arts advocates in this city. I’m fortunate to be friends with the amazing Philippa Hughes, arts promoter extraordinaire. She’s reinvented the local arts scene with the Pink Line Project (who I write for occasionally). Philippa doesn’t do staid art gallery openings. She always has a different take on these events, designed to attract people who aren’t normally interested in the arts

She’s seen here at Audio Warhol, which is a perfect example of her work, making art fun and accessible to ordinary people. Watching strings perform an avant-garde piece in the National Gallery of Art was one of the most beautiful things I experienced all year.

Dancers and actors are an alien species to me, which is perhaps why I find them so fascinating. Getting up on stage and performing? That would be my nightmare.

But some can do it, even in the hundred-degree heat of Dance Day DC. In addition to capturing Redskins cheerleaders and the very loud Mary Murphy, I got this photo which I love:

Black and white works really well in dance. And how did the girl on the left get up so high?

Leo Bloom: Actors are not animals! They’re human beings!
Max Bialystock: They are? Have you ever eaten with one?

I love that quote from The Producers. My favorite part of the year is the DC Shorts Film Festival. And one of the coolest things about DC Shorts is the short screenplay competition, where the winner receives $2000 to turn their script into a short film.

Out of more than a hundred submissions, we chose five finalists who performed their scripts with actors in a a live screenplay reading. One of the writers couldn’t make it, so I filled in, casting and directing his script.

Here’s the annotated script of Desdemona, the script that we performed. I read the descriptions while actors played the different characters in the story.

While I admire actors, dancers and other creative types, I draw the line at performance artists. I always thought that they were crazy and my suspicions were confirmed by my encounter with Agnes Bolt. You can read the story of an art experiment gone wrong. Or just look at her eyes in this picture:

Weirdly, the bubble that Bolt lived in is now part of OccupyDC, which is appropriate because they’re both acts of meaningless theater.

Bikes

I must mention my obsession with bikes. One of the things that I love about DC is you don’t need a car. I bike everywhere so of course I took pictures of Bike to Work Day, as well as bikes in the snow, pretty girls on bikes, electric bikes and even a bike trail video. But it was this picture that generated the most controversy:

I thought it was funny – a park ranger in a big hat riding a bike. Turns out it’s Bill Line, spokesperson for the National Park Service and opponent of bike sharing on the National Mall. A minor kerfuffle resulted, as local cycling advocates noted the irony as well as Line’s unsafe biking practices. Lesson learned – even your most trivial photos may turn out to be important.

Food

Why is taking pictures of food so much fun? It’s because you’re capturing the memory of a good experience, like the Pink Blast cocktail:

It’s a custom drink for Philippa Hughes – how cool is that?

Peruvian chicken, an afternoon cupcake, a Shake Shack burger, amazing tacos and this delicious chicken curry all fell to my iPhone.

My only regret is not taking pictures of everything I ate in 2011.

Coffee was a recurring theme, however, which why I was glad to go to a coffee tasting at Yola, featuring Jon from DistrictBean.

He can answer anything you’ve ever wanted to know about the black brew.

iPhoneography

My photographic year was also influenced tremendously by the iwishyouwerehere show by Keith Lane at the Hillyer Gallery. Seeing iPhone photos hanging on the wall of an art gallery got me thinking about the photographic possibilities of this ubiquitous electronic device. His show and the earlier InstantDC show demonstrated that you could be an artist with an iPhone – that’s a very liberating thought.

This led to me taking a lot more photos with my iPhone and, just a few months later, winning first place in the Fotoweek Mobile Phone Image Contest.

That’s what’s great about art – it expands your vision in new and creative directions.

Moving Forward

Finally, I present this picture:

It had been rainy, cold and dark for three straight days. It was the worst time of year, when the days are short and night arrives at 5 PM.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I went out for drinks and then wandered the streets. The rain became a light drizzle and I captured this scene.

This represents a lot of what I’m interested in photographically – black and white, an iPhone pic, a city scene, a little lonely and mysterious.

It also demonstrates what a comfort art can be. On a dark, miserable night I was able to create an image that I really enjoyed. I forgot all about the three days of rain as I got this picture. That’s why it means so much to me.

In 2012, where will my camera take me? More food shots, certainly. I’d also like to do some portraits, as well as continuing the document the arts scene that I find so fascinating. I’m also interested in biking culture in DC.

At the start of 2011, I didn’t know I’d be taking so many pictures of protests. It’s hard to predict what the new year will bring. But my camera will be out of the bag and ready to go.

I recently won first place in the Fotoweek Mobile Phone Image Contest. Here’s how I came up with the winning photo.

The theme of the competition was “Fotoweek Through the Mobile Lens”:

Mobile devices allow you to get up close to capture intimate moments, abstract macros, candid street photos, night projects, and what FotoWeek DC Festival means to you this year as you walk around DC and experience all of our events.

I went to several Fotoweek shows but was so busy seeing amazing photos that I hardly took any pictures at all.

So, I decided to visit Fotoweek HQ before the contest ended to see if I could get a good iPhone pic for the competition. Fotoweek HQ (the old Borders on L Street) was filled with exhibits by photojournalists. My original idea was to get a photo of people enjoying the show, like this:

patrons at Fotoweek HQ

In addition to having photographs along the walls, they also had exhibits on panels in the middle of the old Borders space. The bottom part of the panel was open.

displays at Fotoweek

I noticed a little girl with her mom on the other side of the display. I could just see her feet, which struck me as funny and absurd. The blankness of the white panel was really interesting. Here’s the photo I took:

original little girl at Fotoweek photo

I took about ten photos inside Fotoweek HQ of people and art. Once home, however, it was obvious that the best photo was of the little girl’s feet – it was simple and strange.

Instagram is really popular among iPhoneographers. I like this iPhone app and its multiplicity of filters and effects but didn’t use it on this photo. I wanted to keep the image as simple as possible.

Instead, I used Adobe Lightroom to crop out the distracting column, as well as making minor adjustments to the temperature, color and contrast to make it “pop”. Here’s the final result:

little girl at Fotoweek HQ - final

I have a thing for symmetry – the three sections and the horizontal lines appealed to me, as well how the photo is focused on one thing.

In the image you also couldn’t really tell how big she was or where the picture was taken. The white space above her feet doesn’t have much definition and is a little mysterious. This is something that appealed to the judges – there was a pleasant surprise as they realized that the picture was from Fotoweek HQ. It was a good representation of the Fotoweek theme of experiencing the festival.

Just before the deadline, I sent in my photo. I didn’t hear anything back but went to the closing party the next night – I love looking at photographs and drinking beer. I stood at the bar and there my photo was – with First Place next to it!

Lessons Learned

• You can’t win if you don’t play. Take photos and submit them.
• Read the directions. Having been a judge myself (for screenplay contests), I knew that contest directions are important. They wanted photos of Fotoweek, not just interesting mobile photos.
• The best camera you have is the one you have with you. For many of us, that’s the iPhone.

I’ve become a huge fan of iPhoneography. While I have a “real” camera (a Canon T2i), my iPhone is with me all the time. It’s great to capture the little moments of life that you might otherwise miss.

Somehow, it’s also more fun, less serious than taking out the big camera.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the iPhone is the most popular camera on Flickr. That’s quite an achievement for a device whose primary function is to make calls.

And now iPhone photos are making their way into art galleries. And I have a picture in one of them (see above). My photo is one of fifty photos selected by judges for the InstantDC show on November 9. There are some great photographers represented – Jim Darling, Keith Lane and Greg Schmigel, among others.

Bridge over the New River, near Fosters Falls, VA

This is from one of my favorite places – New River Trail State Park in southwest Virginia. It’s an old rail-trail that follows the river for miles. It’s scenic and sparcely-used, especially in late fall. I was lucky to get this picture (and bike ride) in before the weather turned. This is where the trail goes over a road which looks like it could be the cover of a country album.

It’s an iPhone pic modified in Instagram.

Bonus: here’s a video of biking down the trail.

A hazy evening in Waynesville, NC, where I went to visit friends for a few days. It’s an iPhone pic that I ran through the “Lolo” filter in CameraBag.