“Excuse me? Is that a camera-phone in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?” There’s no doubt that the iPhone has revolutionized the world of “point-and-shoot” photography. With over 1000 photography apps in the iTunes store, it boggles the mind that anything else gets done in the world these days.

So now, the first-ever APPOS: iPhone App Awards & Photo Contest is about to get underway. Sponsored by the great folks at Adorama, the contest has two parts: a popular vote on the best iPhone photo apps and an iPhone photo contest.  Click here to head to the contest site.

The APPOS Awards will cover six categories of iPhone Apps: colorization, masking/cropping, filters, zoom, panoramic and stop action. Along with honoring the software titles and their developers, Adorama will showcase the winning Photo Apps, chosen by popular vote of site visitors. The winners of the iPhone photo contest will be chosen by a panel of judges, in categories including Nature, People, Humor and Creative/Special Effects.

Wish I Could Enter…

The APPOS prize pool is incredible. The Grand Prize winner will get a $1000 Adorama gift card. Ten 2nd-place winners will get a Wacom Bamboo tablet. Fifteen 3rd-place winners will get a Canon Pixma MP560 Inkjet Photo All-In-One Printer. Thirty 4th-place winners will get a $100 Adorama gift card. Twenty-five 5th-place winners will get a $50 gift card to the Apple App Store. That’s 81 opportunities to win! You can read more about the prizes right here.

I can’t enter… because I’m a judge. The good news (for me anyway) is that several of my favorite photographers are also judges. Let’s see, the judges are:

• Scott Kelby—champion of digital photographers and Photoshopers worldwide
• Joe McNally—the man I lovingly call “the Indiana Jones of modern photography”
• Eric Meola—a Canon Explorer of Light and all-around master of photographic color
• Moose Peterson—renowned wildlife photographer and workshop leader
• Your’s truly
• Boomer & Carton—a pair of lively NYC radio personas from WFAN

Photo entries and votes on Apps will be accepted from January 15 to February 16, 2010.

The winners will be announced in March.