While the Supreme Court heard the Obamacare case, protests against the law were held outside. The media and demonstrators were careful not to get on the steps of the Court, which were under the protection of the Supreme Court Police.

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.

The inspection of the Washington Monument for earthquake damage. My photo in DCist Exposed.

Want to see great Washington photos while enjoying DC Brau in a hip art gallery?

Then check out DCist Exposed. It’s the sixth year for this photography show. I have a photo in it too.

DCist Exposed is so big that they have two opening nights – March 21 and 22. I’ll be at both.

You will not find better entertainment for $10!

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.

This photo appeared in America at Work in The Atlantic. It’s a fascinating gallery of the diverse range of professions in this country. I love how The Atlantic does photojournalism so was delighted that they chose my picture for inclusion.

The photo is from an OccupyDC protest. Living in Washington, I see a lot of protests. But what’s interesting to me is how these events are covered by the media.

It doesn’t matter what your business model is as a photographer. It matters what the customer’s buying model is.

The above bit of wisdom is by Guy Kawasaki, who is quoted in an interesting article on rethinking photography business models.

These days, just about the only way photographers can make a living is by shooting weddings. But brides are creatures of our modern age too and are balking at some of the more old-fashioned elements of the business. Scott Bourne writes:

Gone are the days when we can just send some negatives to the lab, order some cheap 8×10 prints, put them in a black folder, mark them up 400 percent and call it a day.

Instead, brides want everything done digitally. They want all the pictures taken during the ceremony burned onto a CD. They even want the unprocessed files so that they can Photoshop them on their own.

Photographers must adapt to what customers want in order to survive.

I see the same thing in the book publishing business. Customers have e-readers, wonderful devices that allow them to buy books instantly. They don’t believe that e-books should be as expensive as print. While publishers may resist, customers believe that e-books should be priced somewhere between free and $9.99.

Readers also don’t care who the publisher is. They talk about the new Stephen King not “Have you seen the St. Martin’s Press catalog?”

But publishers are sticking to their business model, of bringing out books slowly and pricing e-books sometimes even more expensively than their print equivalents. They won’t survive.

Instead, the publisher as middleman will dissipate as authors and readers find each other on Amazon and other e-bookstores.

Social Media Week has been going on this week in DC. One of the sessions was on open source culture. Derrick Ashong is on a mission to give away a million downloads of his music tracks.

How can you make money at that? You can’t. But the sad truth is that most musicians never see a dime from album sales. If you’re a new artist, it’s better to give your stuff away and make money from concerts. (Or, if you’re a rapper, from your clothing line.) But first you need an audience. Giving away music is a way to develop that audience, a model that is explained in Free by Chris Anderson.

In his talk, Derrick explained that the hardest thing to get was people’s attention. “I’ve never heard of you – why would I listen to your music?” Giving away music is a way to start the conversation, to hopefully turn the disinterested into fans.

Can you give away music and make a living? How do photographers adapt to a world of photos everywhere all the time? What does a writer have to do to connect with an online audience?

Nobody knows the answers to these questions yet because the traditional business models are changing, driven by advances in connectivity and consumer demands. But hanging onto the old will lead to irrelevance. Those that adapt to the wishes of consumers will succeed.

A model stands at the end of the runway during Crystal Couture in Crystal City, VA. Her pose reminded me of the cover of The Winner Stands Alone.

OccupyDC still occupies McPherson Square. I was there on the day that they were supposed to be evicted. Nothing happened, except for this tent-raising, where OccupyDC covered the statue of General McPherson with a Tent of Dreams.

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.