iPhone Photography Awards Showcase Best Photos of 2015

Monday June 15, 2015 7:18 PM PDT by Juli Clover
Photos from the winners of the eighth annual iPhone Photography Awards have been posted on the IPPA website, offering a look at some of the best pictures captured with an iPhone over the course of the past year.

As in previous years, the photos feature a range of different subjects, from people to landscapes to animals. This year's first place photo, by Michal Koralewski from Poland, depicts a man playing traditional Polish songs on an accordion.

firstplaceippawinner
The second place photo is an impressively clear image of a bird in flight, while the third place winner features a couple on a train. According to the contest, all photos were taken with an iPhone, and photo editing with apps like Instagram and VSCO was permitted.

secondplaceippawinner
Along with the top three winners, IPPA also chooses winning photographs from several different categories, including animals, architecture, children, flowers, food, landscapes, nature, panorama, and more. The image below, taken in Cairo, took the top slot in the "Travel" category.

travelippawinner
Apple's iPhone 6, iPhone 5s, and iPhone 5 continue to rank as the three most popular cameras on photo sharing site Flickr, which is no surprise given the quality of the images that can be captured with the phones. Apple continually improves the picture quality in its iPhones, and rumors have suggested that the upcoming iPhone 6s could include the biggest camera jump yet.

Photos from all of the winners of the 2015 iPhone Photography Awards can be found on the IPPA website. The site is also now accepting entries for the 2016 awards.

Tags: iPhone Photography Awards, IPPA
32 comments


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AngerDanger
47 months ago
Wow, these are… actually quite unimpressive.
Rating: 6 Votes
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SeaFox
47 months ago

Wow, these are… actually quite unimpressive.


What's unimpressive is allowing filtering software in a photography competition. Are we supposed to be judging the photographer's picture-taking abilities, or their ability to make their pictures more interesting by enhancing contrast, boosting color saturation, or adding a color cast to enhance the landscape they took?
Rating: 5 Votes
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dumastudetto
47 months ago
iPhone is the best camera most people will ever own. When you see amazing results like those showcased here, it should hopefully inspire a whole new generation of photographers to create incredible works we can all enjoy.
Rating: 3 Votes
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simonmet
47 months ago

What's unimpressive is allowing filtering software in a photography competition. Are we supposed to be judging the photographer's picture-taking abilities, or their ability to make their pictures more interesting by enhancing contrast, boosting color saturation, or adding a color cast to enhance the landscape they took?


This is the ongoing debate in photography...what is an acceptable level of post-processing. The same thing happens in more prestigious photography competitions too. There was a huge controversy about one of the World Press Photo competition winners a few years ago.

Supporters of post-production argue that it's not much different to using analogue filters or customising the development procedure to enhance or minimise certain traits such as highlights and shadows or colour reproduction. There was always a great deal of flexibility in the days of film be it film types with different properties, cross processing or even double exposure just to name a few.

I'm inclined to accept the fact that digital enhancement is just something that will always exist in modern photography, however I also strongly believe that capturing the best possible image in the first instance will always produce the best results and that you can't really fake a good picture in post.
Rating: 2 Votes
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peterh988
47 months ago

A dumb question (please don't flame me) -- for those "Shot With iPhone 6" billboards, how do they blow up an iPhone image to that giant size and still make it look good, despite the relatively low resolution of the original photo?


The main thing is viewing distance. You're usually looking at it from a long way away, so it doesn't need to be that sharp, and isn't when you get close up. Billboards are printed at only something around 25dpi as well.

There's a calculation you can do to find the optimum viewing distance, it's something to do with the diagonal of the image, never used it!

(This is all the stuff they taught me at college 25+ years ago so it may have changed!)
Rating: 2 Votes
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brdeveloper
47 months ago
Not that there aren't way better cameraphones in the market (e.g., Lumia 930).
Rating: 2 Votes
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phrehdd
47 months ago
I don't like to belittle (in general) photos done by other people but have to agree with AngerDanger on this one - "quite unimpressive."

I do like the iphone camera for quickie photos or documentation. I had to catch a fast photo of a drain pipe problem at my last apartment and the phone was "good enough." I consider it the digital version of the old snapshot film cameras with the 110 and 126 Kodak style cartridges of film.
Rating: 2 Votes
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mpavilion
47 months ago
A dumb question (please don't flame me) -- for those "Shot With iPhone 6" billboards, how do they blow up an iPhone image to that giant size and still make it look good, despite the relatively low resolution of the original photo?
Rating: 2 Votes
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MonkeySee....
47 months ago
The bird one is an excellent shot. Love the moody dark one too.

Just appreciate the picture and stop thinking about it too much. :rolleyes:
Rating: 2 Votes
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TheFlash80
47 months ago

I never thought of that until you posted it just now.
Anyone have any ideas as to how Apple accomplishes that?


Scaling in tiny increments of 5% or lower with a certain kind of algorithm in Photoshop (bicubic?) many times over will result in an image that still looks very good. I used to scale images from my 5 megapixel Nikon D50 to 50 megapixels and its was still very clear. When you factor in the size of a billboard with the viewing distance, it's possible.
Rating: 1 Votes
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