As I discussed in my previous blog the camera on my iPhone was my introduction to the world of photography. I have never had any formal training as a photographer. I used the tried and tested 'Learn By Doing' method. I actually think that learning the basics of photography using my phone has stood to me in the long term. The early phones that I used had fixed lenses with no zoom and tiny sensors that were next to useless in low light conditions. These limitations meant that I had to be more aware of composition and available light when taking photos. In a lot of cases I had to get quite creative to get shots that worked. Particularly in 'challenging' light.

In this example I only had 2 light sources. The street light on the corner in my estate and the one out on the main road but the combination of the two created a nice moody scene. I remember arriving home this particular evening, rushing into my wife and asking her to grab her coat. She said 'Why? Are we going out?' I replied 'No. It's foggy outside. I want to recreate a scene from The Exorcist'. It was a brave move but it worked.

A lot of photographers who start out with traditional cameras think that they have to use manual mode straight away and then get frustrated when they are overwhelmed with trying to figure out what settings to use rather than concentrating on why they are taking a particular photo. Photography ends up becoming a technical pursuit rather than an artistic one. Because I wasn't worried about settings and other technicalities I could just concentrate on telling stories with my photos. I would use apps to edit my photos to enhance images to add to the mood and narrative.

I was amazed how much I could do using apps on the phone. The only limitation was my imagination. I could perform basic edits such as altering exposure and contrast but I could also add elements to photos using composite and effects apps. There are apps for adding light, weather and other effects. I will talk about these apps in more detail in future blogs. In this example I used a photo I had taken of the Pepper Canister Church in Dublin. Some people might recognise it from a Boyzone album cover. I didn't want to create anything that scary but I did think that the church had a great Gothic feel to it that would work for creating a nice moody image. I used a number of different apps to add texture to the sky, add the person and fog effects and then finally convert to black and white in order to capture the mood I wanted.

Below are a few more examples of the images I created using phone photos and apps.

I loved trying to tell stories in my photos. A lot of the time I would have the final edit in my mind before I would even take the photo. I mentioned in the previous blog about my love of cinema and this fed into the types of images I was creating. I wanted them to look like stills from movies. At the time I used to frequently get comments along the lines of 'Nice photo. You must have a great camera'. I remember feeling quite chuffed by this because, well, I didn't have a camera. It was only in later years that I thought 'Wait a second, no one ever complimented an author on having a wonderful typewriter or a chef on having an amazing cooker' But that's a discussion for another blog.

I continued on trying to develop this style of photography and in 2015 something completely unexpected happened. I was signed up by a company called Arcangel Images. This company specializes in stock imagery for the publishing industry. They had just set up a database of mobile phone images and wanted me to contribute to this database. I was a little bit skeptical that a publisher would want to use a phone image as a book cover but to my surprise I got my first book cover through them later that year with a photo I had taken of my soon while out for a weekend walk.

Since then I have gone on to get  over 30 book covers in 7 countries including a New York Times Bestseller. The majority of them with iPhone images. One of my favourites was the cover for The Hearts Invisible Furies by Irish author John Boyne which featured my son, Conor.

But the best thing is that my wife, two sons and daughter all feature on book covers now. Conor has made it onto five but he is the only one counting :)

I often say that you should never put a limit on your ambitions just because you are using a phone for your photography. When I started getting the book covers it was the first time that I actually thought to myself that maybe there could be a career here but I knew that I was never going to be a professional photographer using just a phone. I knew I had to get a 'proper' camera so that is just what I did. And that is when the real fun began once I realised I hadn't clue how to use it. It the next blog I will talk about how I overcame that 'little' obstacle.