10 Fun and Creative Projects To Do with your Digital Camera Phone

Do you have a digital camera built in to your phone? Do you use it? It seems like a lot of people carry around a phone-based camera but don’t really use it all that much. If they do use it then it’s mostly to snap a picture to upload to a social networking site like Facebook. There’s nothing wrong with using your phone’s camera for that but you might also want to think about other creative and fun ways to use your digital camera phone. After all, this is a device that you almost always have with you and it’s one which is simple and quick to use.

Here’s a look at ten fun things that you could do with your digital camera phone:

1.     Take one picture per day. Taking photographs in your daily life allows yourself to see your life a little bit differently. You start to pay attention to different things when you decide that you’re going to photograph them. Challenge yourself to take one, but only one, picture every single day with your mobile phone’s camera. You will probably find yourself looking more carefully at the world around you as you try to decide what to photograph. Your perspective on the world might even shift as you do this project!

2.     Take a picture at each block on a normal walk. There is certainly somewhere that you walk every day. Maybe you walk to work or maybe you just walk down to the corner to get the mail each day. Whatever your normal walk is break it up and make it interesting by taking a picture at each block or each few steps of the walk. This is another project that will get you to slow down and notice the world around you in a new way.

3.     Send pictures of yourself to your loved ones. Start taking random pictures of yourself doing whatever it is that you might be doing. Snap a shot of yourself at the coffee shop as you buy your morning cup of coffee. Send it as an MMS message to your mom with a note saying that you wish you were having coffee at her place. Do this throughout the day and you may find yourself feeling more connected to your loved ones than ever before.

4.     Take abstract photos and use them as inspiration for art. Take your camera out in random places and capture photos of odd things. For example, take a picture of the corner of the coat that the person in front of you is wearing on the bus. Wait a few weeks until you’ve forgotten exactly what those pictures are of. Then take your phone out and go through the pictures. Use them as inspiration to create a painting or a poem. You’ll get some great artistic ideas from doing this.

5.     Compose haiku poems to go with your phone pictures. Go through your phone’s pictures and MMS them to yourself or to a friend. With each message you can attach a short text message. Use this text message space to compose haikus. What a creative little exercise to get your brain going while you’re on the go!

6.     Take photos of your friends and make collage art out of them. Start using your camera phone more often to snap pictures of the things that you are doing with the people that you do them with. Once you’ve got a set of pictures send them to yourself or upload them to the web. Use them to create digital photo collages. You might even end up printing these out and turning them into cool framed photo gifts for your friends.

7.     Make mini-picture stories out of a series of pictures. Take an hour or two to yourself and head out for a walk. The goal of your walk will be to collect a series of picture that all tell a story. You probably won’t even know what the story is until you are halfway through the series. You may or may not choose to add text to your story. This can be a lot of fun especially as you get better and better at it.

8.     Make mini-movies on your digital camera phone. Most people have a digital camera phone that can also do some really basic video recording. If that’s the case for you then don’t neglect this opportunity to use your phone’s camera in a creative way. Make mini-movies about whatever you happen to think about during a downtime period throughout your day. Have fun with it!

9.     Snap photos of things that inspire you throughout the day. Get in the habit of noticing the things that inspire you throughout the day. It may be a funny sign that you see or the style of a person standing on a street corner. You can’t rely on your memory to keep these things in your mind until you can use them creatively but you can certainly rely on your digital camera phone to snap the picture that will remind you of the source of inspiration.

10. Learn to use any advanced functions on your digital camera phone. Most digital camera phones have advanced functions like smile detection or auto zoom. The sad thing is that most people don’t ever bother trying to learn how to use these things because they don’t really think of their camera phones as real cameras. Make it a point to learn about all of the different things that you are capable of doing with your camera phone. If your phone is web-connected then learn about geotagging and uploading options. The more that you know about using your digital camera phone the more creative you are going to be able to be with it.