Phone photography has come a long way since grainy snaps captured on a 2-megapixel cellphones. In fact, today’s smartphones are the camera that you carry around 24/7. But phone images aren’t limited to dodgy selfies or pictures of your food – iPhones in particular can be used to capture much more creative, fine-art photography.

Gabriel Ribeiro’s image took first place in the Portrait category
To prove exactly how good a phone image can be, check out the winning frames from the 2017 iPhone Photography Awards. This year was the competition’s 10th anniversary and saw thousands of entries from 130 different countries, with the top images picking up prizes that included an iPad Pro.

Francesca Tonegutti’s mono shot of a horse won the Animals category
This year’s Grand Prize Winner Photographer of the Year Award went to Sebastian Tomada of New York City, USA for his entry, entitled ‘Children of Qayyarah’. The intense scene captured children in Qayyarah, Iraq, playing amidst smoke and fire from nearby oil wells that were set on fire by militants of Islamic State.

Sebastian Tomada’s hard-hitting image of children in Iraq took the top prize
To find out more about the iPhone Photography Awards, click here, or scroll down to view more of the winning images…

This amazing shot from Patryk Kuleta took second place in the Architecture category

This icy image earned Sergey Pesterev second place in Landscapes

Kuanglong Zhang captured this colourful image of Udaipur in India

Sydney-based photographer Christopher Armstrong won the Abstract category

Yeow-Kwang Yeo’s portrait netted him third place in the competition

Juan Carlos Castañeda’s image of Standing Rock protesters won the ‘The America I Know’ category