My iPhone has taught me a few things about photography.   I’ve been a photographer most of my life, but I’ve never shot landscapes before.   As a photojournalist, I crave people and their emotion in my images.

Looking through my 2012 iPhone photographs, there are hardly any people.

I found I embraced the light, anywhere I could, and opened myself to taking a photograph of something I hadn’t focused on with my professional cameras.

A water fountain.  A sunset.  Barstools.  A duck!

I discovered I love shooting details with my iPhone.  Not worrying over emotional content and just documenting what I saw, relying on my own emotion to carry through to the photograph.

  I also didn’t take a million photographs of one thing, working the frame endlessly like I do on the job.   I tried to limit myself to three frames of something and then move on.

That didn’t last long.   I did, however, consciously try to not overshoot, or overthink, what I was documenting.

There’s a joke in Chicago, where I live, that you can spot the tourists downtown on Michigan Ave. as they’re the only ones who look up.

I realized that I looked up quite a bit with my iPhone.

And, I remembered something I learned while studying Photojournalism in college.

It’s not the camera you use.   It’s what you do with it.

Wishing you all a wonderful year.

And, hope you take a second to look up every once in a while.

(You can follow me on Instagram at http://instagram.com/cusicphoto)