Digital cameras and clever software have liberated millions of people, conned for generations by indifferent holiday snap processing into believing that they always cropped off the feet and tops of the heads of their loved ones. Now everyone can make a sharp, well exposed picture, simply and inexpensively reproduce it using common domestic computer and printer equipment and cheaply and instantly disseminate it via the internet or mobile phone. Some of us have only ever known photography as digital and millions are coming to it for the first time through the ownership of mobile phones. A proliferation of websites host the results, pictures shot by my kids and their friends at a music festival last weekend were on the internet before the mud on their clothes was dry.

The potential practical, artistic and recreational applications are infinite and the ability of pictures to transcend linguistic and cultural barriers offers a thrilling prospect for the future as skills, and new techniques are developed and the technology is driven forward.

Millions of private citizens are now in possession of mass media communications technology with speed and range previously accessible only to global media organisations and the military, which brings us round to “citizen journalism” again.

In its simplest form it is the visual equivalent of the kind of ‘vox pop’ eyewitness contributions which have always accompanied radio and tv news reports. The news media are not ubiquitous and routinely seek local eyewitnesses and potential sources of stills and video from anyone at all on the spot be they amateur or professional. In the days of film, as young photographers arriving at the scene of a news story, we were always told to be on the look out for “punter pix”. One such was the picture of Concorde on fire over Paris, picked-up from Hungarian plane spotter Andreas Kisgergely. It didn’t matter that it was a huge pull of a small part of the original negative; it wasn’t even the best picture of the doomed aircraft, that was shot by a Japanese passenger on a plane waiting to take-off for Tokyo, but none of that mattered because for 24 hours as far as the world’s media were concerned Andreas Kisgergely’s picture was all there was and it played on front pages everywhere.

The first time I became truly aware of the universality of the cameraphone was when new elected Pope Benedict left the Conclave to visit his apartment just outside St Peter’s. All the media were there, photographers with long lenses standing on ladders and low walls ready to shoot over the heads of the public. What none of us had bargained for was that as soon as he appeared, every member of the waiting crowd raised their mobile phones above their heads to shoot what we used to call a “Hail Mary”, completely obliterating the view of most of the waiting pros.

 A simple internet search shows the enormous number of committed and accomplished amateur photographers out there shooting wonderful pictures. It is them I would encourage to contribute timely pictures to the daily news and sports file. With good file sizes now possible on cameraphones there is no longer any excuse for those, “I wish I’d had a camera with me” moments.

Not everyone is going to win a coconut but everyone now has the potential do so.