The iPhone was a "revolutionary mobile phone" and a "breakthrough internet communications device" — with a camera. It was certainly not the first phone to have a camera — and it probably wasn't even the best camera available in a phone at the time — but it certainly was the best camera in my phone. As soon as I used it, I felt a genuine, relaxed enthusiasm for taking pictures that I hadn’t felt for years.

The biggest thrill I got from a roll of processed film was the thrill of relief

The iPhone’s crappy 2-megapixel camera removed all of the normal concerns over image quality. Resolution, exposure, and color saturation were all uniformly terrible, but what did it matter because I was shooting on a phone... a phone! It was fun.

But with the launch of the App Store in the summer of 2008, and the huge number of photo apps that subsequently became available, I realized that this wasn’t just about the fun of shooting on smartphones; I was in the midst of a fundamental paradigm shift in photography.

Since the launch of the original iPhone and the arrival of the App Store, the differences between those photographs taken on a smartphone and those taken on regular digital cameras have become far less apparent. Not because the phone cameras are getting better (despite the ever-improving optics, sensors, and software on smartphones, there’s still a huge difference in quality between an iPhone camera and a Canon 5D Mark III), but because of where photographs are being viewed. The vast majority of imagery is now seen in the exact same places: on smartphones and tablets, via apps such as Pinterest, Facebook, Google+, Flipboard and most importantly, Instagram. At 1024 x 1024 pixels, who can really tell whether a photo was taken on an iPhone or a Canon 5D? More to the point, who cares?

Love it or loathe it (I love it), Instagram has fundamentally changed a great many perceptions of photography, not just my own. This is because Instagram lives on the devices that the vast majority of us are using to take the photos we share. It has fused the act of taking pictures with the act of viewing and sharing pictures. As a result, Instagram created one seamless user experience: Shoot, process, share, view, like, comment, shoot, process, share. Repeat. This process is now both ubiquitous, and a badge of honor. Users proudly tout "iPhone Only" on their profiles to distinguish themselves from those now using regular digital cameras — which many Instagram purists view as "cheating."