Photography is about the simple joy of seeing. Although craft and technique should never be underestimated, it is actually a mysterious neural connection between the eye and the brain that makes great pictures, which is not just about the mechanics of the medium. For me part of the fun of so-called iPhonography harks back to the days of shooting Polaroids. We would squint at these little marvels as they developed before our eyes. Frequently the colour was a bit off and the resolution was poor but there was often something magical about them that proved elusive when shooting a similar scene on 'proper' film. The strength of the iPhone lies not in its humble 3 megapixel camera, but in its accessibility and the almost limitless creative possibilities offered by the many applications that allow us to experiment with our photos. Most of the images in this book have been post processed a bit, but this is all done on board the iPhone itself and seldom takes more than a minute or two using a couple of apps. In fact it is my rule not to use the computer at all.



This is why I call it a sketchbook. I think of snapping pictures on the iPhone as the photographic equivalent of sketching ideas on a pad of paper. A scribble here and a dash of watercolour there and suddenly you might end up with something you weren't quite expecting, but which has a unique quality that would be hard to replicate using state of the art professional technology.