‘Best Camera’ iPhone App by Chase Jarvis
Chase Jarvis, a world-renowned commercial photographer, recently launched an iPhone application, book and online photo community to convince everyone that the best camera is the one that's with you and absolutely anyone can snap a remarkable image.
Context & Ripple Effects
Chase Jarvis is a commercial photographer whose brand rests on shot-for-hire craft, so the significance of the 'Best Camera' launch is the messenger as much as the message: a working pro is putting his name behind the claim that the phone already in your pocket counts as real camera equipment.
The timing tracks the iPhone's spread into everyday life — two years earlier, [[a:none|iPhone traffic]] was dense enough at Duke University to knock out dozens of campus Wi-Fi access points, a sign of how many people were carrying the device constantly. Jarvis packages the thesis across three formats at once: the app itself, a companion book, and an online photo community, turning a slogan ('the best camera is the one that's with you') into a product line.
First-order effects
- Jarvis converts professional credibility into a consumer product: iPhone owners gain a filtered-shooting app and a dedicated showcase community, positioning ordinary phone snapshots as publishable work.
- The simultaneous app-book-community launch makes the iPhone camera a subject of photography culture, not just gadget coverage — the audience shifts from spec shoppers to people who take pictures daily.
Second-order effects
- Other photographers and app developers face pressure to treat the phone camera as legitimate gear rather than a compromise, opening a category of camera-adjacent software built around shooting style rather than hardware.
- Dedicated point-and-shoot makers now compete against an argument about availability rather than image quality — the always-with-you device wins shots that a better camera left at home never captures.
Third-order effects
- If the thesis holds, photographic value migrates from equipment toward capture-plus-distribution stacks, and whoever owns the community where images are shared accrues leverage over whoever made the lens.
- Once anyone can snap and publish a remarkable image, the scarce goods become taste and trust — curation and provenance of captured images turn into the differentiators worth building products around.
The trend: Photography's center of gravity is shifting from dedicated cameras toward the phone-plus-app-plus-community stack, with credentialed professionals lending the shift legitimacy.