These stunning 2024 iPhone Photography Award winners prove you don’t need an iPhone 16 upgrade after all

By James On Aug 21, 2024

Rumors of the iPhone 16 Pro may promise improved optical zoom and a better wide-angle camera, but the new winners of the 2024 iPhone Photography Awards show you don’t need a new iPhone to take great photos.

The competition, now in its 17th year, runs independently of Apple, but has become a fixture on the smartphone snapping calendar. It claims to be the world’s longest-running iPhone photography competition – and as you might expect, there are some pretty good shots spread across its 15 categories.

The iPhone 15 Pro Max is, understandably, the most-represented camera at the awards – it featured in 10 of the 46 winning shots. The awards certainly aren’t dominated by new Apple models, though. The next-most popular phones were the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone X, which featured in four winning shots each.

A few of the photos were even taken on iPhones that won’t even support iOS 18 when it comes out next month. The top spot in the “Animals” category (taken by Colin Hoskins) was taken on an iPhone 7 Plus, which launched in 2016. Meanwhile, the top spot in the “People” category (a creepy photo of some renovators in an LA motel by Brooke Wilen) was taken on an iPhone 6S. “The best camera is the one you have with you” may be a cliché, but it’s also true.

What’s clear from the winners below is that composition and a little editing are more important than hardware these days. Few shots look “straight out of camera,” and many show the telltale signs of color grading from top photo editing apps like Snapseed and Lightroom, or a tasteful black and white conversion.

While the contest rules state that “photos may not be edited in Photoshop or any other desktop image processing program,” that does leave room for mobile editors – and we’re fine with that.

Looking for inspiration for World Photography Day? Here’s a gallery of all this year’s award winners, and the iPhone used for each photo…

Overall winner

Grand Prize Winner, by Erin Brooks (taken with an iPhone 15 Pro Max) (Image credit: IPPA Awards / Erin Brooks)

The jury chose the photo above, Boy meets shark by Erin Brooks, as their grand prize winner. Erin is no stranger to awards, having previously been runner-up in the Portrait category in 2022 and winning the Series category in 2021. The black-and-white photo was taken on an iPhone 15 Pro Max.

Shot in Tampa, Florida, the photo captures the moment a young boy gets close to a massive shark – at least behind the safety of glass – and the judges said it “symbolizes the innocence of youth combined with the mysteries of the deep sea.” The editing also, fittingly, gives it a picture-book quality.

However, it certainly wasn’t the only notable entry, as you can see below in the galleries of the other winners in these categories…