From dusk 'till dawn, I've spent the past week traipsing around Singapore shooting dozens of locations and personalities for two separate editorial feature commissions.  My photographic briefs are pretty standard for luxury lifestyle and travel publications: shoot a collection of stylish and sophisticated hotels, eateries and bars as well as the people who run them.

It is always a pleasure for me to work on these types of assignments, but especially when they're in my own backyard.  I enjoy exploring and experiencing places in Singapore that I've never been before, and I love meeting the people behind them: chefs, sommeliers, managers, artists, designers and architects.

As always, my iPhone is in my pocket throughout all these shoots.  And I love to pull it out and shoot with it alongside my "real" 35mm DSLR cameras whenever I see anything interesting or inspiring.

My latest iPhoneographic obsession is Instagram, the popular iPhone app that allows users to add interesting retro-inspired filters to photographs and then share the pictures on Instagram's own social network, as well as on other social websites like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr.

I like the way the square format of Instagram forces me to compose images differently than when using my Nikons and their standard 3:2 aspect ratios.  I love the variety of filters and how they can transform the mood of my photographs.  And I really enjoy the simplicity and ease of the Instagram photo feed and how I can see the images my friends around the world are making on their iPhones.

These 20 photographs were all made in Singapore this past week using Instagram.  See more of my iPhoneography elsewhere on my blog or on Flickr.

The past few weeks have been filled with commissioned editorial assignments and commercial advertising shoots, which is great for business, but has left me little time for personal creative photography.

Earlier this week, while on-set at the studio, there were a few moments of downtime as the crew and I waited for the stylist to finish prepping the model.  I was mindlessly fiddling with my iPhone and took a few shots of my illuminated laptop keyboard.

This gave me an (admittedly peculiar) idea, as well as posed a small challenge for me: could I construct the URL to my website www.scottawoodward.com entirely from iPhone photographs of random letters that I encountered in the course of my day?  Silly, I know.  But it was fun.

Well, it took me longer than one day; it took me three, actually (there are a lot of "W's" in there).  I didn't know what to do with it when I finished, so here is the fruit of my labour: my "iPhoneographic URL Ransom Letter".

For anyone who's interested, I tried to shoot each letter using a different iPhone app (although I lost track and don't think I actually succeeded).  Counted among the shots above are Hipstamatic, OldPhotoPRO, ClassicTOY, MoreLomo, Phototreats, BlendCam, Gorillacam, Polarize, Format126, LENSES, Vint B&W, Retro Camera, ShakeItPhoto and HDR Fusion.

I spent a week over New Year's in Chiang Mai, Thailand, a city of 160,000 residents about 700km north of the nation's capital, Bangkok.  Chiang Mai is a laid back city full of colourful temples, quaint cafés, fantastic restaurants, used bookshops and roadside markets.  It was my third visit to Chiang Mai in the past seven or eight years, and I enjoyed it tremendously.

Having visited Chiang Mai before, I didn't feel compelled to lug my heavy 35mm DSLR camera and lenses everywhere I went, opting just to carry my iPhone in my pocket instead. One of the highlights of the visit was meeting a family from The Hague, Netherlands who were staying at our hotel.  Their two sons, Maarten and Sebastian, accompanied us to the Thapae Boxing Stadium for an evening of Thailand's very own Singha beer and Muay Thai.

I spent a good part of the evening wandering the stadium and shooting the action with the Hipstamatic app for my iPhone; this is a collection of some of my favourite photography from the night. Perhaps I should call this my "ChiangMaiPhoneography" series.

See more of my iPhoneography elsewhere on my blog or on Flickr.

"I have a camera.  Sometimes, I use it to make phone calls." - Marty Yawnick, Life in LoFi: iPhoneography

There's something about shooting with my iPhone that has really captivated me of late.  Maybe it's the constantly growing collection of exciting and powerful photography apps available for download on iTunes.  Or perhaps it's the ever-increasing popularity of #iPhoneography that I see everyday on Twitter that keeps inspiring me to be more creative.  Either way, for someone who spends most of his time peering out from behind the lens of clunky DSLR or medium format cameras, the freedom and flexibility of making photographs my iPhone is a welcome change of pace for me.

From lights gleaming off the hood of an Audi prototype electric car to the rooftop of Marina Bay Sands casino, from a clients' statue of Mao Zedong to a portrait of a friends' sleeping infant, from a snapshot of Vampire Weekend performing live on stage to the view of the wall across the road from my favourite little coffee shop, this is how Singapore has looked through the 3 megapixel lens of my iPhone the past few weeks.

See more of my iPhoneography elsewhere on my blog or on Flickr.

Motivated by the very generous compliment my friend Faz gave me last week over at her blog "The Drama Diaries", I decided to download my iPhone's photos folder to my Mac and see what was hiding in there...

Here's what I found: a small collection of iPhoneographs I made on my recent travels to Bali, Shanghai, Melbourne, Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, and -- right here in my own backyard -- Singapore.

Some of these images have been processed directly on my iPhone using photography apps like MoreLomo and Format126, while others have been post-processed in Adobe's Lightroom 3, which even features a built-in lens distortion correction tool for the iPhone.  I put (very minor) finishing touches on all these images in Photoshop.

I am thoroughly enjoying having a camera in my pocket all the time, and I am continually inspired to better use it by what I learn from blogs like iPhoneography and Life in LoFi, as well as the creative work I see other photographers making.

See more of my iPhoneography on Flickr.

I recently spent two weeks' holiday with my family in Canada.  It is a long way to travel, literally half-way around the world, from Singapore to Toronto.

But there are two little girls there that make the 24-hour airplane journey worth every minute: my nieces, Brooke (4 years-old) and Paige (6 years-old).

I made this series of photographs -- in their front hallway with presents I bought them, playing fairy princess dress-up and swinging high, higher, highest on their backyard swing set -- while visiting with them at their home this past July, as well as on my trip to Canada last December.

Brooke and Paige are wonderful subjects to photograph. Like all little girls, they love the attention.  And like all young children, they aren't (yet) self-conscious.

I love Brooke and Paige for more reasons than I can count: their vivid imaginations, their boundless curiousity, their fervid individuality.

But I think I love them most because they love me back.

See more of my Diana Experiment imagery on Flickr.

Last week a friend and I took a short holiday to Australia. We spent a few days in Sydney, a few days in Melbourne and one (amazing) day driving along the Great Ocean Road.  It was a fantastic break, and a trip that I won't soon forget.

I have been fortunate enough to visit Australia many times over the years, and each time I go I seem to enjoy it more and more; this time was no exception.  Melbourne was fantastic and the Great Ocean Road was breathtakingly beautiful.  But there's just something I find so special about Sydney every time I visit.  It has a remarkable beauty and an energy that I find both palpable and infectious.

I spent a couple of hours on the afternoon I arrived wandering around Circular Quay, gazing at Sydney's iconic Harbour Bridge and Opera House, and being a typical tourist.  I only had my iPhone in my pocket, but it was all I needed to capture what I saw and felt as the sun set on this amazing city.

See more of my iPhoneography on Flickr.

A few months ago I spent a week in Cambodia photographing a commission for SilkAir's inflight magazine, Silkwinds.  With my assigned shooting completed -- and an afternoon free before my flight back to Singapore -- I decided to visit the majestic, millennium-old Angkor Wat temple complex on the outskirts of the Siem Reap, a small provincial cluster of old villages nestled between rice paddies and stretching along the Siem Reap River.

Angkor is a sanctuary of immense artistic and archaeological significance and doubtlessly one of the most breathtaking architectural masterpieces left standing in the world today.

Having been privileged enough to tour and photograph Angkor twice before, I wanted to try and capture the ancient city differently on this visit.  So, with my Nikon D3x and Diana+ 55mm and 110mm plastic lenses, I spent four glorious hours wandering and making photographs inside the walled city that served as the capital of the Khmer Empire at the start of the 12th century.

See more of my Diana Experiment imagery on Flickr.

Earlier this year I purchased a Diana F+ DSLR adaptor for my Nikon D3x, along with the Diana+ 55mm Wide Angle and Diana+ 110mm Telephoto lenses.  To some, it might seem like blasphemy to attach a $25 piece of plastic to the front of a $7,000 digital body.  However, to me it provides a whole new way to make creative photography.

I thoroughly enjoy experimenting with this marriage of hi-fi and lo-fi, and I love the soft, dream-like feel that the Diana lenses give to my digital imagery.

I have also found that this is a fantastic little combination to bring along with me on holiday.  So many times I have lugged my huge camera bag on a vacation overseas, filled with two (or more) digital bodies and multiple glass lenses, only to lug the bag all the way back home unopened.  However, the D3x and Diana+ 55mm combo is both lightweight and fun to play with, so I have found myself packing less gear, and bringing out my camera to play more often when I am on holiday.  And that's just good for the soul.

See more of my Diana Experiment imagery on Flickr.

Photography is one of the most accessible and democratic forms of artistic expression there is.  The ubiquity of cameras -- on mobile phones or small digital point-and-shoot cameras in our pockets, all the way to large, powerful digital SLR cameras -- makes it ever easier to capture fantastic images.

But making great photographs has little to do with owning the best and most expensive equipment.  The real secret behind original photography is in how you see a moment and interpret it in a still frame.  Are you able to make something ordinary appear extraordinary by showing it differently?  Are you able to make the viewer feel a physical emotion when they look at your photograph?  Are you able to transport someone with you to a moment in time simply by pressing your shutter?

Jointly inspired by this artistic and photographic philosophy, as well as by my good friend Mike Sargent (the Photo Editor at the Straits Times newspaper in Singapore), who is never without his digital point-and-shoot camera, and Chase Jarvis (a Seattle-based photographer) and his "The Best Camera Is The One That’s With You" project, I've taken to shooting a lot more often with my iPhone.

It's free.  It's fun.  It's easy.

And it makes walking to get lunch more than just about food; its now a daily photography assignment.

See more of my iPhoneography on Flickr.

Or better yet, share some of yours with me.

**EDIT** An article about the point-and-shoot cameras used by a handful of well-known professional photographers, including Pulitzer Prize-winner David Hume Kennerly, can be found here.