Love the One You're With

I sometimes use the Stephen Stills song title to categorize a set of pictures taken with my phone camera. It's a pop culture version of a photography truism: "The best camera is the one you have with you." Recently, I made the lamentable decision to leave my "real" camera at home for my morning walk, thinking I really didn't have the time for a good shoot and that the weather didn't look promising anyway. Oops. As soon as I was in Golden Gate Park the fog returned in a flirtatious and gorgeous way, never overwhelming the scenes. My phone is seven years old, with an unfancy 12 MP camera. But I just had to capture some of what I was seeing as I walked through the Botanical Garden and around Stow Lake. The images — which supported more finishing work than you might expect from Jpegs — should serve me just fine for online display, or for cards or small prints.