Dazzling hand-held winners of the 2023 Mobile Photography Awards

Geocentric Explorations – First place in Landscapes and Wildlife. Zhengjie Wu View gallery – 25 images
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By Loz Blain
2023 Mar 19

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If you’ve got a photographer’s eye, today’s smartphones certainly won’t hold you back from taking incredible photos. The winners of the 12th annual Mobile Photography Awards prove that the best camera truly is the one you’ve got with you.

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Dinosaurs among us may remember when mobile phones started getting cameras around the turn of the millennium. It looked like such hubris stuffing these not-even-a-megapixel digital cameras into phones with screen resolutions even smaller. Nokia’s first crack at a cameraphone in 2001, for example, was the 7650, which would take you a terrible 640 x 480 picture, and then show it to you on a 176 x 208-pixel screen.

Clearly, things have moved along just a tad. With today’s smartphones, everyone’s got a monster of a digital camera in their pocket at all times. The result has been an utter decimation in camera sales, which peaked around 2010 and have since plunged a staggering 93%. The overwhelming majority of photos are now taken on mobile devices, so it’s just as well that the hardware is now so damn good.

“Mobile photography has come a long way, and it is exciting to see the quality of the images that can be created with just a smartphone,” says Daniel Berman, Founder of the Mobile Photography Awards. “The Mobile Photography Awards are a testament to the power of this medium, and we are thrilled to be a part of it.”

Across 12 categories, including an “Artificial Intelligence” category as well as more traditional areas like Landscapes, Travel, Architecture, Street Photography and more creative designations like Silhouettes and The Darkness / Noir, judges attempted to highlight the unique “accessibility, immediacy and portability” of mobile devices in their selections from a record number of international entries.

The overall winner for 2023 is Glenn Homann of Australia, who mainly shoots on iPhone and submitted a broad portfolio of works highlighting his talents in several different areas.

“Oh wow,” stated Homann, “I’m blown away. This recognition means a lot to me, and I hope it will inspire others to explore the endless possibilities of mobile photography.”