iPhone - the best camera to have is the camera ya got in yer pocket

Every now and again, I am fortunate enough to be able to travel for both work and for fun. Being a pro photographer does has its perks regarding having ready access to lots of swell gear, but all that equipment does tend to get heavy and bulky after a while, so it's sometimes nice to leave the big stuff at home and travel light. The old adage "it's a poor craftsman who blames his tools" couldn't be more apt when applied to photography as well. 

A camera is nothing more than a tool. Sure, some cameras are definitely nicer than others, but they all really do the same relatively simple thing: transfer reflected light to either a piece of film or a digital sensor. Optics and digital sensor quality aside, the best camera to use for a given situation is the one you happen to have with you, because if there's no camera there'll be no picture anyway. 

I may not always have my nice Canon DSLR with me, but I do always have my iPhone in my pocket. Candidly, the 3G's camera is sorely lacking from a technical standpoint, but that doesn't make the thing any less convenient and handy. I actually like the challenge of trying to take a good photo with a middling camera. There are also plenty of free/99¢ apps to compensate for some of those technical shortcomings.

The real magic of photography is, and always has been, content and composition. Technical prowess certainly has it's place, but having technical skills without a good eye will only get you lots of nicely-exposed, boring photos.

This gallery is of panoramic photos were all taken with my iPhone and stitched together with a $1.99 app called AutoStitch, and subsequently enhanced with either the free Adobe Photoshop for iPhone app, or perhaps another free app; I can't always remember which combination of apps I've used for an image. Taking the panos is pretty simple; it just requires looking at a scene as a larger image and then, using a steady hand, photographing the entire scene one frame at a time from left to right, then feeding those frames to the stitching app. Easy, and fun!