Photography is not about the Camera- it's about how you use it.

I am a photographer. I love cameras, and the things that you can do with cameras. Cameras to take wide angles and panoramas, cameras to take square pictures, cameras to take multiple pictures, instant pictures, infrared pictures, funky pictures ... the list goes on and on.

Now I have a smartphone, and with the addition of a few inexpensive apps, I have several camera bags worth of options all in my pocket. It means, like many of us, I am never without a camera.

The idea behind this column is to look at ways to use the smartphone and cell phone cameras creatively, to go beyond the usual snapshots of friends, self-portraits, and other shots for the family album, towards taking visually interesting and eye-catching photographs. There is nothing wrong with taking snaps, but I don't see them as a creative outlet, nor is it even scratching the surface of what is possible.

So I am challenging you to take up your cell phone and smart phone cameras to look at the world through a new lens. Get started by having a look at what people are doing. The Darkroom Gallery website has an online exhibition of cell phone picture called Phone-o-graphic Arts (http://www.darkroomgallery.com/ex16)

The photographs in this exhibition concentrate on composition, lighting, texture and all the tools at the disposal of an artist, to make pictures that have impact. Each photo is accompanied by an explanation of how the photographer made the image.

Try this popular app called Hipstamatic. (http://hipstamatic.com/the_app.html) This little app turns a smart phone

into an old fashioned square picture with a variety of possible effects. The lenses deliberately mimic cheap plastic lenses of toy cameras, so the photographic results are often unpredictable, and lead to some exciting images.

Four photos taken with the Hipstamatic around the school last week