Just about every photographer I know - professional or amateur - always has a second camera with them. For most of your photography you may use a very elaborate DSLR but chances are very good that in your pocket is a camera phone.
At the Cliffs of Mohr, we were able to get it before the general public so we could have some unincumbered time to photograph this spectacular landscape.
For many people, a funny thing happens when they put down their big fancy rig and, instead, use their simple camera phone. When you’re not worries about all the settings, your brain instead turns to more artistic endeavors. You essentially can become more creative once you are freed from the shackles of all those settings, buttons and switches.
There are other advantages too. With a camera that literally fits in your pocket, you most likely have it with you whenever a photogenic opportunity arrises.
Here is our workshop group waiting for our tables at O'Shea's Pub in Enniskillin, Ireland.
Of course, you must accept the limitations of the tool. They aren’t dynamic performers in low light and you trade off the versatility of a DSLR. Not to mention the image quality issues. But for a lot of the work that we want to do, the camera-phone is perfect.
Right now we are in the middle of a workshop in Ireland and have had very limited time with our laptops to download and process any of our work. But we’ve been able to share a lot of our experiences in the form of iPhone photos. I doubt that any would become large wall art but to share our experiences, they are perfect.
If you shoot camera-phone images, take a look at a couple apps to process them. We like to use Snapseed. You’ll also find that the mobile version of Lightroom is very good and there are several folks from our group that likes to use the camera function in the mobile Lightroom. I’ve tried it and it is a lot of fun.
Sunset from our rooms in Sneem, Ireland. This was a great hotel and the rooms and the restaurant overlooked the lake. We didn't have to go far for a spectacular view.
Don’t forget that you’ll find a Photoshop version for the phone as well.
The bottom line is that you should always be prepared to shoot the world around and if you want to practice your creativity, pick up you camera-phone and stretch your creative skills.