Singaporean wins Apple's 2020 iPhone Photography Awards with obsolete iPhone 6

These days, it’s so easy for anyone to simply call themselves a “photographer”, simply by merit of the massive pixel count in the images that their shiny new smartphone can capture.

But we all know that even the original iPhone has the capacity to take better pictures than an iPhone 11 Pro Max if one knows how to fully utilise its long-outdated camera.

We’re exaggerating here, of course, but you get the drift.

That’s exactly what Singaporean Wu Jiawen did with her iPhone 6, which helped her walk away with third place in the Nature category of the prestigious 2020 iPhone Photography Awards (IPPAWARDS), the winners of which were announced earlier this week.

Her piece, Journey to the Lava Field was shot in Hawaii, and depicts in excruciating detail, molten lava in the process of cooling down and hardening.

Mind you, this shot was taken from a device that was made in 2014, and has long since been put out of production.

It’s definitely something the iPhone 11 series can capture today, but this clearly shows that it’s all about the photographer’s eye and skill at using a smartphone camera that resulted in this award-winning photo.

If this isn’t impressive, we don’t know what is.

According to Wu, the biggest challenge she faced when taking the photo was actually the hike to the volcano itself.

“The biggest challenge is actually the hiking itself, there was no road, no sign, and we just followed other hikers on the dead lava field, without knowing how long do we need to continue walking,” says Wu.

“But it all turned out to be totally worth after we seeing the fresh lava.”

Wu, who has been an avid iPhone user since the iPhone 4, also mentioned that she prefers shooting on her mobile phone as compared to using a DSLR due to the convenience a smartphone brings, “I can try different angles, and compositions, taking many and choose later.”

Accompanying the winning shot are the captured images from Israel’s Avishai Futerman (iPhone XR) and China’s Lisi Li (iPhone 7 Plus), who placed second and first in the Nature category respectively.

The 13th IPPAWARDS certainly was a celebration of the best Apple’s iconic smartphone in its various iterations over the years has to offer. Aside from Jiawen, another Singaporean in Yeo Yeow Kwang also won big at the 2017 IPPAWARDS, coming in second place for Photographer of the Year.

For the full list of winners and their winning shots, you can check out the official 2020 iPhone Photography Awards website.

This article was first published in Geek Culture.