Dragging My iPhone Through a Creative Crisis by Craig Boehman

I’ve been a working photographer for over a decade. I’ve led workshops, sold prints, made portraits, captured strangers on the streets of Mumbai and beyond. I’ve done the grind. I’ve felt the high. I’ve even felt like I was on the right track a few times.

Lately though, I feel like I’ve hit a wall. Not just with the work itself, but with what it means to be doing this now. The cameras are changing. The industry is shifting. Even the definition of a photograph is being pulled apart. And in the middle of all that, I’ve been dragging around this iPhone trying to figure out what I’m still doing.

This isn’t a manifesto. It’s not a rebrand. It’s a check-in with myself. Somewhere between walking the streets and avoiding the endless sea of plugins and post-processing, I realized I needed to strip the work down. I needed to step back from the noise, even the noise I used to love. This piece is about that process. About letting go. About asking better questions. About trying to make photographs that feel like they still matter.

Staring at a Screen, Wondering What the Hell I’m Doing

Shot on the iPhone 16 Pro. Sassoon Docks, Mumbai.

Lately I find myself holding the iPhone with more purpose than I ever expected. This wasn’t supposed to be a serious camera. It was supposed to be a fallback. A convenience. But somehow it is giving me access to images I was never able to make with the big gear. I am creating photographs that feel closer to Impressionism than to the digital clarity I used to chase. There is texture in the limitations. There is poetry in the blur. I never thought I would say that.

And still I am stuck. I keep circling the same questions. Should I go all-in on minimalism? Should I become one of those photographers who waits for a single figure to pass in front of some monolithic black-and-white building in Berlin or London? Should I lean into darkness and shadow like Caravaggio or Rembrandt, who understood that light means nothing without its opposite? Do I simplify the work or let it grow more complex? These are not just aesthetic questions. These are questions about who I am becoming as an artist.

One thing I do know is that I no longer need recognizable faces. I am not interested in stories that are too literal. I still shoot street photos like a fiend chasing his next hit. I walk the same roads and catch the same moments. But those shots belong to a different part of me. They feed my need to keep seeing. They keep the muscle alive. They fill the feed. But they are not the work I want to be known for.

The real work is harder to find. It is quieter and less obvious. It asks more of me and gives back less assurance. The iPhone has cracked something open, the portability of it alone. I just do not know what to do with it yet. I am standing at the edge of something. I just have not stepped into it.

Trading Weight for Movement

I didn’t switch to the iPhone because it was cool or trendy. I switched because I was tired of carrying too much. Too much gear. Too many expectations. Too many voices in my head telling me what a real photographer is supposed to use. I just wanted to move again. To make images without the ritual of lenses, settings, backups, wrist pain, and regret.

The phone let me do that. I could walk lighter and shoot faster. I could focus on what I saw instead of what I carried. But it came with tradeoffs. I lost precision. I lost intention. There’s no ceremony when you take a picture with your phone. There is only instinct and impulse.

That was the point though. I needed to strip it down. I needed to get to whatever was underneath all the layers I had built around my work. The iPhone became less of a device and more of a scalpel. It forced me to cut into the habits that no longer served me.

This was not a downgrade. It was an exorcism.

The Pandemic and the Pixel Mirage

Shot on the Sony A7iii. An ICM image with an AI-generated background.

When the world shut down, I did what a lot of photographers did. I stared at my archive. I stared at my future. I tried to figure out what the hell I was doing with any of it.

Street photography felt like a dead end. Not artistically. That still had juice. But professionally. Financially. Print-wise. The hard truth is that people don’t hang strangers’ faces in their homes. They might like the moment, the gesture, the story. But they don’t buy it. At least not enough to build a career on it.

So I pivoted. I wandered into fine art. I explored abstraction. I flirted with generative AI. The tools were seductive. The possibilities were endless. That was the problem. I could create anything but I started to care about none of it.

I used to make images that were grounded in the real. Now I was generating pixels that had nothing to do with my camera. They were clever. Some were even beautiful. But they were not mine. Not really. I lost the thread. I was dressing up someone else’s data and calling it photography.

That is when the doubt set in. Not just about the work, but about what kind of artist I was becoming. Or if I was even still a photographer.

The Things I Know for Sure

I don’t need faces. I don’t need identity in the literal sense. I don’t need to see someone’s expression to know there’s meaning in a frame. The people in my images don’t need to be known. They don’t even need to be seen. I’ve done that work already. I’ve chased those moments for a decade. I still do, to be honest. Some part of me still runs on that instinct. I shoot those scenes the way some people light a cigarette. It’s habit. It’s comfort. But it is not the future.

What I’m chasing now is harder to name. I want the work to feel intentional but not staged. I want to strip it down but not sterilize it. Some days I think I should go all in on minimalism. One person. One building. Negative space like it’s gospel. Other days I’m drawn to deep shadows. Scenes that whisper. Light like Caravaggio. Darkness that feels thick enough to hold. Maybe even the controlled chaos of Rembrandt. Those masters used light like a weapon. They used absence to reveal truth.

The problem is that every direction feels possible. And none of them feel like mine. Not yet.

iPhad or Not to iPad, That Is the Question

Every time I sit at the desktop to edit, a part of me dies. Not because I hate it, but because I know I’m falling back into the old trap. Layers. Plugins. Brushes. Adjustments. Ten steps forward and two crashes back. The workflow used to feel like craft. Now it feels like delay.

That’s why I keep circling the iPad. I don’t own one yet, but considering it. The idea of editing wherever I shoot is intoxicating. The idea of building something from the moment of capture to the final polish, all in one flow, makes sense. Maybe it is not about chasing more power. Maybe it is about chasing momentum.

But every time I consider it, I feel like I’m about to give something up. Control. Depth. That obsessive tweaking I used to justify as professionalism. The truth is that most of the tools I’ve relied on in the past don’t even serve the kind of work I want to make now. I don’t need to composite skies. I don’t need twelve filters stacked on top of one another. I don’t need to drag images through a gauntlet of edits just to feel like I did something.

I need the work to feel alive again. I need the process to match the pictures. If the iPad helps me move in that direction, maybe it is time to stop resisting.

The Fine Art Guy I’ve Been Neglecting

There’s a version of me that still wants to make serious work. Not serious as in self-important. Serious as in lasting. Images that hang on walls, not just live in feeds. Prints that matter. Work that has weight beyond a swipe.

I’ve ignored that version for too long. I’ve fed the street shooter. I’ve kept the muscles warm with daily shots, fast edits, and decent engagement. But that work belongs to a different rhythm. It scratches the surface, but it never hits the bone.

The fine art guy is quieter. He doesn’t chase. He waits. He thinks longer. He gives a shit about paper types and tonal depth. He doesn’t care if an image gets likes. He cares if it holds up under real light, behind real glass, on a real wall.

I’ve sidelined him because his work is harder. It takes more time. It demands more patience. It doesn’t give me that daily dopamine drip. But the truth is, he’s the one I should be listening to right now. He’s the one that actually has a chance to build something sustainable. Something that sells. Something that matters.

That’s where the struggle is now. Balancing the daily hit with the long game. Making sure the street shooter doesn’t drown out the artist.

Thinking Out Loud Before I Shut the Door

I’m not wrapping this up with a breakthrough. There’s no new style to unveil. No project neatly defined. No artist statement waiting in the wings. What I have is a tension I’m finally starting to respect. The kind that doesn’t resolve. The kind that fuels the work.

Honestly, I don’t even know why I’m bothering to write this. Maybe it’s because the questions have gotten loud enough that I need to get them out. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent the last couple of years listening to everyone else’s advice and none of it has helped. Maybe I just needed to say something out loud before I shut the door for a while.

I used to want to go places with other photographers. Hell, I still do. But there’s a part of me now that wants to disappear into the work. No feedback. No noise. Just the camera and the questions. I need space to figure this out on my own. Maybe you’ve felt that too. Maybe you’re stuck somewhere similar.

If this stirred anything up for you, drop a comment and talk about it. I’m not sure if it’ll help me, but maybe it’ll help you. Writing this has helped me see where I’m actually at. Not where I hoped I’d be, but where I really am.

So I’ll keep dragging this iPhone through whatever storm I’m in. I’ll keep walking the line between instinct and intention. I’ll keep showing up. That’s all I’ve ever really done. And right now, it’s enough.

Dragging My iPhone Through a Creative Crisis