Jim Vetter, Bay Area People Photographer (as I like to call myself) says “I love to have a camera with me ALL the time.”  And, so I do.  But before I get to the subject matter of the title of this post, a little back story…

Several years ago when I was getting a little bored with the corporate thing but was still in denial about it, my creative urge was increasing again and I wanted to do more shooting.  At the time, my Nikon D300 was my only “real” camera so I thought that I should be carrying it around all the time.  Now, a Nikon D300 with an 18-200mm zoom lens is not a compact camera.  It’s not a point and shoot.  Its a commitment!  So, I got myself a big sling bag that held my camera, an extra lens PLUS everything that was already in my briefcase like files, random crap and a laptop computer!  It was HEAVY and it was a sling bag which means that it hangs over one shoulder allowing me to quickly swing it around and pull out the camera to capture any awesome photo opp that presented itself.

Fast forward to December 2010 and I’m on my back with a surgeon grinding bone out of my shoulder to fix the problem caused by carrying a too-heavy bag over that shoulder for too-long.

So….enter the iPhone.  That cute little device that I carried around and started at too-many hours a day and never used as a camera because I was “serious” about photography and serious photographers types don’t shoot with cell phones.  Well, after my shoulder refused to continue carrying the heavy-assed sling bag and I got myself a rolling briefcase, I relaxed my position on the iPhone camera issue.  And I don’t think I would have made this leap of faith without the inspiration of Chase Jarvis.  If you’re not familiar with him and you think photography is cool, go check him out.  If Justin Timberlake brought sexy back to music, Chase Jarvis brought cool back to photography.

Anyway, Chase wrote a book called The Best Camera is the One that’s With You.  He simultaneously published the book and an awesome iPhone app to enable iPhone users to capture and easily pimp out and share photos across all of their social media channels.  This book amazed me because he published stunning photographs all captured and processed with his iPhone – no Photoshop!  I figured if he can do this with an iPhone, I can too dammit!

I soon was shoot with my iPhone all the time and getting photos that I never thought would be possible.  And even better – I was getting images that I NEVER would get with me “real” camera because I had in-cameraphone picture pimping options that would require a LOT of effort in post production if I shot them with the big camera.  It was incredibly liberating to suddenly realize that I had this sweet creative tool in my pocket and I wasn’t afraid to use it!

OK – so that’s the back story.  Now, here are some of my favorite images from the best camera that was with me at the time.

City Sights