I shot over 10,000 street photos on an iPhone: What I discovered

Just as a heads up guys, this video talks about taking pictures on a smartphone.

It's not about how to take pictures on a smartphone, but what I learnt

when I use a smartphone almost exclusively for taking pictures for five years.

How's that, how's that?

Now we've got that little disclaimer out the way.

It's because I always feel like, well, maybe we should just say this is not about how to use a smartphone, but it's what I learned when I've, the last five years, where I have actually mostly used this to take my pictures.

Now, I'm going to give you a bit of a background.

Obviously, I've been, you know, I say obviously.

You don't know.

Maybe you don't.

This is the first time on the channel.

If it's your first time here, welcome, my little Photonaut.

That's awesome to have you.

So, I've been taking photographs, you know, mostly in a professional capacity for the last 30 years.

It's just been somehow done.

And from when I started out, and through until fairly recently, I was buying into that idea that, you know, to take...

good photographs, you need a good camera.

To take your job seriously, you needed the best equipment that you possibly could have.

You owed it to the art form to have an expensive camera, maybe something out of one of these books.

This is the very wonderful History of Photography in 50 Cameras.

They've got works of art here, they are really works of art.

The House of Black 500C, the Nikon F2, the Leicas, they all think, but that was part of the problem.

is that i there was this idea that to be a photographer you needed to have a proper camera and to be a certain type of photography you needed a certain type of camera now when i started photography

This was it.

This is my first ever camera.

This is a Spider-Man, and it was made by Vanity Fair.

This is 1978 on the back.

And it doesn't do anything.

It has some film, and that's it.

It doesn't focus.

The only thing is there's a shutter and a wind-on lever.

When I took those photographs in that, I didn't care anything about it.

I just took a picture.

Now,

I found over time of using my smartphone that I've gotten back into this idea of just taking pictures.

And the reason that I ended up using my smartphone to take photographs to begin with is that about five and a half years ago now, I had a little boy, came into our lives,

And if you've had children, you will know that when you are out and about with the pram and all the accoutrements that come with an infant child, carrying around a camera

is not really beneficial.

There's so many other sorts of things.

So I started taking more and more photographs with my smartphone and I found that it became a lot easier for me to take a picture because this was immediate.

I could just pull it out, swipe up, go to the camera app, take a picture and it was done.

So I started taking more photos.

It was a very weird sort of thing.

Obviously, I went from wandering around with my camera, my DSLR, thinking about taking photographs and not really just photographing anything and everything, overthinking it, to just kind of reacting, taking more and more photographs.

And that was a real benefit.

The more photographs I was taking, the better my instinct was becoming.

I talked about that in a video recently.

And I wonder, because for 10, 15 years, I'd been in a studio taking photographs day in and day out of people's families with my camera.

And I didn't really want to carry that around when I went out on the weekend.

But the smartphone, the immediacy of it, the simplicity of it, both in terms of the actual operation and the ease of taking a photograph, rejuvenated my enjoyment of finding images.

now i have to just very quickly say there is a thing here the second thing that i discovered on my smartphone on my iphone especially this is an iphone something or other i don't really know and that is the image quality sucks okay it's i we are there right if you want big prints of wonderfully detailed images with you know lots of all that kind of cool stuff

Okay, smartphone's not going to do it for you.

I think maybe some of the newer ones are maybe there and stuff.

And then there's a whole discussion about lenses and things.

So what I was finding is that the photographs I actually sort of take, they really want to be big.

I was on a photo critique sort of thing on a channel called The Crit House with Jeff Larson.

He's a very good, you know, facilitator is the word I was using with him the other day, of knowledge in the photographic community.

somebody said they were looking at my photos and they wanted to see, they could see them big in a gallery, that that's where they would kind of start to shine.

And of course I can't do that, right?

Because they're shot on a smartphone.

So there is that sort of, you know, fallback.

So if you want to kind of make sort of things and obviously, you know, smartphones not great,

but there's something else that kind of i think you know sort of makes that less of an issue is that i now have bodies of work i'm photographing more and i'm i'm enjoying the process more because i'm i've stepped out of the the world sometimes murky world of kind of let's say

Photography with a capital P. And I have to be very careful how I say these things now, right?

Because it's like, you know, there are people, and obviously everybody has their own ideas about these things, but there are people who take

you know, photographs and they're very, they're earnest and they're serious about their taking pictures and they believe that you should invest in the best gear that you possibly can.

And that's perfectly fine.

And with that comes a lot of rules and, you know, and ways of doing, accepted ways of doing things.

Dogma, maybe to use a single word.

And as soon as I kind of stopped using, and again, I'm going to say proper cameras,

and moved to my smartphone, it was like that didn't matter.

It's like I'd become a bit of a heretic by using the smartphone.

So because I was now free of that dogma, I could just do whatever I wanted.

And that kind of ties in with the quality idea.

I wasn't fussed about the quality because the quality was just not there.

It ceased to be an issue.

Much as this doesn't have focus.

If the picture's in focus or out of focus, that's kind of...

it's just what it is, right?

There's nothing to do.

So you stop worrying about it.

This has got a guessimation focusing on it, which means that there's a whole, everything's kind of in focus.

So you have to sort of guess this distance.

It's a very weird sort of thing.

And that was a liberating approach to sit and go, ah, actually,

Now I can just do my own thing.

You know, it was wonderful to sit there.

And I've broken so many rules of photography within my, you know, within the time that I've been photographing with my iPhone.

That, you know, it's kind of weird.

I don't really want to go back to photographing, you know, proper verticals and things like that.

But we don't have to because obviously we're all allowed to photograph in the ways that we want to.

Right, we're going to talk very quickly about the Frames app on here, because there's one thing that your DSLR, your mirrorless, your medium format cameras can't do, and that is access.

Frames app.

He says with all the confidence, maybe there is a camera that is going to have apps, but your smartphone will.

Being able to share your images in this kind of modern world, and that's another benefit of using a phone is it makes it so easy to do that, is great when you are sharing them in places where you feel welcome, where you feel supported, where you are around like-minded people.

It is just easy to use.

It's there on your phone whenever you want to use it.

Go check them out.

I think, you know, it is well worth looking at.

I know a lot of you support frames, and if you are not familiar with them, check out the app.

It is great.

Thank you ever so much and we're going to get back into the video now And coupled with that idea of you know, there's there's the right way to photograph and this is the wrong way to photograph and stuff like that was

this this concept that you know people who use a a digital sorry a uh you know an iphone something like this are not really photographers or something like that and and i i kind of i think at the beginning of iphones and things like that i i felt that way um whether that was right or wrong is i was about to say neither here nor there but it isn't neither here nor there is is whether it's right or wrong

And it was a snooty way of thinking because at the time,

I hadn't seen the work of some people.

And as soon as I actually paid interest in using a smartphone and wanting to kind of figure out how to use them better, what could you do with them, things like that, and just kind of see if I was missing something, I was finding the work of people who were using iPhones and smartphones to take images, and they are stunning.

Some people's work, they were stunning.

Now, that's not to say that everybody who uses a smartphone takes stunning pictures, just as much as everybody who takes photos with a digital camera makes stunning photos.

But there's one photographer in particular, Eric Mencher.

I have to mention him because his work is absolutely brilliant.

Now, when I first saw his work, I went, okay, what's square?

I like square.

Another benefit of photographing with my phone is I can photograph natively square.

And I looked at this photographer and I went,

That, that's amazing.

That is outstanding photography.

I was just like, and then I found out that it was all on his iPhone.

And that just blew my mind.

That was like, wow, look what you can do.

It was just, it was glorious.

If you know how to use the tool that you have to take a picture, then, you know, the world is your oyster.

Coupled with what I mentioned earlier about, you know, people, myself sitting there going, if you've got a smartphone, you're not a real photographer, is that as I've talked to a number of people through mentoring and one-to-ones and things of that nature,

There are people you know, I want to get into photography, but I haven't been able to afford, you know proper camera I'm saving up and things like that and and photography is an expensive hobby Either I think there's no bones about that right some of these cameras and stuff that are aimed at you know hobbyist Wow That you know and this this kind of obsession with with likers and things but that's a whole another thing, you know this this

simple little device that most people have in the world has made photography and making kind of, you know, sort of arty photography accessible to millions.

And a lot of people will decry that and say, you know, it's the end of photography now with AI and things of that nature.

But, you know, that's, they're talking about people who make their living from photography.

I'm addressing this at people who enjoy the process of taking a picture.

It was a mind shift where I was kind of like, you're not really into this kind of thing.

If you can't just get a camera, then you're not a photographer.

And that's all changed.

That has been the biggest change that has come, that I've discovered from using a smartphone, is that...

That is put back in my hands, this, the joy, the excitement, the fun, the magic of just taking pictures without any fussing, without the focus and the back button peaking and stuff.

I think if you were to do a review on this camera here, it would be 10 seconds.

It's made out of plastic.

It's got blue and it's got red, and it's got a wind-on lever.

It's about reconnecting with just the absolute pleasure of taking pictures.

And I know there are going to be people who watch this video and say, oh, you know, if you take pictures with your smartphone and stuff like that, then you're not a real photographer and stuff like that.

And, you know, OK, that's cool, man.

If that's your viewpoint, then that's cool.

But, you know, when you talk to photographers throughout history, there's a thing they talk about.

The camera is just a tool.

Don McCullen says he uses a camera like a toothbrush, just because it's there.

Every Saturday, I just, I talk about, you know, ideas about photography that just, you know, help to kind of encourage people to go out there and take photographs through my newsletter, Saturday selections.

And if you're interested in getting hold of a next copy, then check out the link in the description box below.

And to see more of my sort of, let's say,

kind of like ampicity work and stuff then check out this video over here thank you ever so much for watching and i will see you again soon