My earliest memories involve cameras or picture taking.  My father always had his Nikon with him on every family outing of course, but even as a small child I was fascinated by the process of photography.  When I was only six or seven I saw a TV show that included some dark room work.  I have no idea what show that was, but from that moment I was hooked.  The next day I found a small tray,  filled it with water, built a darkroom out of a blanket, some rope and my dresser, and then went to find the box of family photos.  I put them in that tray and sloshed it back and forth just like I saw on TV.  I wasn't even sure what this tray was supposed to do but I loved it.  My parents were not too happy when they found their box of family photos a bit soggy, but luckily nothing was permanently lost.

Later in college I found myself skipping my "important" computer science and business classes to hang out in the communications dark room.  I hung out with a group of photographer friends, some professional, some absolute beginners, some with years of experience, but all of whom wanted to learn and share photography, art, and vision with each other.

For years, every Tuesday night from May through August, we would gather for a photowalk.  About 20 of us would chose a small area (at most just a few blocks) and just shoot.  The rest of the year was devoted to dark room work, sharing images, and informal competitions with those photowalk images.  I learned more from that experience then I did in all my years of art school.  Art and photography is about what YOU see and how YOU want to share that vision.  It is not about the equipment, or the training, or the models, or money spent, etc.  I learned to see beauty everywhere and loved to share what I saw.

My professional career began with me 100% in the "creative" world, but took some turns.  I love what I do now, but for a few years I lost the simple fun and beauty that can be found in everyday life and everday image capture.  The iPhone brought that back for me.

After purchasing the iPhone and being disappointed at the camera like everyone was, I discovered all the photo apps available. The iPhone can take a photo from start to finish all in your pocket.  I started to see what it could do and I was hooked again.  I started to do my own little photowalks and was in love with the process again.  It became my way of doodling.  I always have hundreds of photos in the camera and at anytime can pull them up and play with them in the developing or filtering applications.

Later I discovered that there were great creative minds out there like Chase Jarvis and others who had started an entire iPhoneography movement online.  I joined Twitter, started to post my shots and have not looked back.  I now have hundreds of Twitter friends who post iPhone pictures every day, share ideas, offer encouragement, give constructive criticism and even hold informal daily competitions.

I use as many applications as I can download, but there are a few "go-to" apps.  Camerabag and Photogene for me are must have's.  CoolFX, PhotoFX, and Tiltshift I use daily and couldn't do without.  I have at least 25 photo applications on the phone and would love to try more, and post my photos to Flickr and a Tumblr Blog. I would love to hear from you and see what photos you are taking!

The above photo is titled "Brides Maid" and the apps used were FocalLab and CameraBagThe above photo is titled "Fireworks" and the apps used were Photogene and CameraBagThe above photo is titled "Look Down" and the apps used were CoolFX, Photogene and TiltshiftThe above photo is titled "Stop" and the app used was CameraBagThe above photo is titled "Track Meet" and the apps used were Tiltshift and CameraBagIf you would like to showcase your iPhone photos here on the iPhoneography blog, then send me an email and I'll reply with details on how to submit.