Last November, I took a quick trip to San Francisco to spend some time with a couple of girlfriends. We went to college together and now live in different parts of the country, so we thought a weekend-away trip would be a fun way to do a short vacation and catch up with each other. San Francisco became our destination with its warmer weather and numerous options for sight-seeing… and it was a relatively inexpensive flight for all of us.
I had never been to San Francisco, that I could remember (I think my family disagrees, as I was there when I was very young) so I was looking forward to exploring a new city. The number one thing on my list was visiting Alcatraz, and the girls agreed that should be on our itinerary. Beyond that, we didn’t do much planning until we were in the city together.
We each had ideas of what San Francisco could offer, but the trip was really more about getting away and hanging out with old friends than planning a schedule of events. This made it a pretty relaxing trip and we did end up doing and seeing a lot of things! I didn’t take my camera everywhere, but my phone was always in my pocket. It’s easy to take a quick shot, and less intimidating than pulling out a full-blown camera for those fast street photography types of photos. Here are a few from our time taking the trolley and exploring Fisherman’s Wharf.
We also hiked up to the Golden Gate Bridge and walked on it. The weather was absolutely perfect the day we chose to do this – we could clearly see the bridge and the views were gorgeous. We didn’t realize how lucky this was until the next day when we noticed the bridge was shrouded in fog. Pretty, but not as conducive for our adventure.
I’m finding that phone photography is my go-to choice for travel photos. I still enjoy bringing my camera along for a specific locale (I shot all of Alcatraz on my Fuji), but when walking around with friends, I already affect the pace of things just by taking photos. I don’t want to hold things up further to pull out my camera. And the photos out of the iPhone XS are pretty dang good. I’d forgotten what it was like to follow my full process of shooting and editing a large batch of photos, all on mobile. With VSCO for my editing, and the iPhone for my camera, the results are pretty satisfying.
I have more to share from San Francisco. Stay tuned!
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