Lena Lachmann-Morck was in her office on August 29, when one of the secretaries in the headhunter’s firm where she worked said she could see smoke coming from the roof of the Royal Academy opposite. Lachmann-Morck watched the drama unfold with her colleagues. Soon flames were leaping into the air and firemen were trying to put out the conflagration.

Lachmann-Morck had only taken one picture on her camera-phone before. “It was just an old Nokia, nothing special. I’m really bad at taking photos, full-stop,” she says, “but I wanted to show a colleague in Edinburgh what was keeping our attention in London.” She took two pictures of the chaos on the RA roof.

Outside, a reporter from The Times found out that she had snapped the fire and encouraged her to send the pictures to the paper’s news desk. One shot not only made it on to Times Online that day (and the next day’s paper), it won Lachmann-Morck the title Cameraphone Photographer of the Year 2006.

Her winning picture takes centre stage at Newsflash, an exhibition of stand-out cameraphone images, shortlisted from 2,000 entries to a Times competition.

Lachmann-Morck, 31, from Battersea, South London, was surprised at her win, “though I can see the picture is action-packed, with the flames and the firemen. It really tells the story.”

The cameraphone as a news recording device came to the fore with the London Tube bombings in July 2005 and the grainy images that people took of fellow passengers making their way through darkened tunnels. And only last week the public again stole a march on the professional photographers when a street in North London was hit by a tornado: The Times received about 30 photographs taken by locals on the scene. As many as 150 pictures were sent to The Times after the Buncefield oil-refinery disaster last year.

“The great thing about pictures from members of the public taken on phones is their immediacy,” says Paul Sanders, the Times picture editor. “The member of the public is there as the incident happens.”

The best pictures are the most dramatic. You can feel the wind-whipping urgency in Andrew Bedford’s picture of a helicopter rescue, as a person is winched to safety from a remote mountainside. But there are quieter gems too: there’s a lovely shot of a frog eyeing up its dinner, which is so clear and sharp that it seems too good to have been taken on a cameraphone, and a stunning image of Waverley Bridge in Edinburgh against a peachy sky scored by roiling grey clouds.

The exhibition also features a series of shots taken by high-profile pundits at major sporting events, such as Nasser Hussain (cricket), Annabel Croft (tennis) and Robbie Earle (football). “The key thing to remember if you are taking pictures on your phone is not to go for dramatic contrasts,” says Sanders. “Cameraphones don’t photograph the very dark or the very light very well. Always fill the frame.”

Sanders believes that altough trained photographers will continue to supply newspapers and magazines with most of their pictures, “images from cameraphones take you to the heart of the story straight away. They also give the reader a sense of personal involvement in a big news story.”

There are downsides. “There’s an invasion of privacy issue,” he says. “Obviously you can’t photograph whoever you like whenever you like. Copyright is a problem too: people can send pictures to us which someone else may have taken.”

Newspapers now check the provenance of any cameraphone picture they run. Some photos can also be too extreme to be included in the papers, such as pictures of horrific mutilation taken on 7/7. But the good outweighs the bad, Sanders believes. “Ninety per cent of people in this country are effectively eyewitnesses to unfolding events,” he claims. “They have the means of taking and transmitting pictures immediately.”

There are now special agencies such as Scoopt set up to sell cameraphone images to newspapers. The market will only expand, Sanders believes. “Cameraphones are getting more and more advanced. Once they were phones with cameras attached, now they’re cameras with phones attached.”

Lachmann-Morck is a convert. “I’ve got a better phone with a better camera. I’ve suddenly realised what a powerful tool it is.”

Newsflash is at the Air Gallery, 32 Dover Street, W1 (020-7409 1255; www.airgallery.co.uk), from tomorrow until Sunday, free. Send your cameraphone images to The Times on 07834 885058. Please tag the picture “News” and include your name and a brief caption explaining what the picture shows.