I usually try something out of my comfort zone, challenging or off-the-wall as a Christmas Image. This year I got playing with an iPhone app called CamWow. My iPhone3 doesn?t give me anything like professional photos and this app downgrades the image size to 320 x 427 pixels, which is about the size of the screen on the phone. The effects aren?t new, there?s nothing that you couldn?t do in Photoshop; however with CamWow you can see the image manipulation in real time as you use the camera. The line drawing effect I used for my ?card? worked particularly well in the dark where it changes night to day and the world through the camera-phone?s ?viewfinder? is cartoon like. The software also has a remarkable way of getting a sharp picture under very low light; it seems like it waits until the camera is still to make the exposure.

The small images were butted up to each other in Photoshop layers afterwards and colour was added sparingly.

Have a wonderful, safe, merry Christmas and do something creative in 2012.