Last weekend, the wife and I set out to do some exploring in the area where we live here in South Carolina. When we left the house, it was warm, and mostly overcast. On the 25 minutes journey up to Table Rock State Park, we drove through a bit of a shower, but it had stopped raining by the time we ventured into the park, so we decided to do a little hiking on the creek side trail.

Along the way, the rain started again, just a little bit, the humidity picked up some, and then dissipated, and the gray day gave way to some pretty sunshine and a great sunset.

As a photographer, the changing conditions could be a bit of a challenge, but what are you going to do, give up and stay home? Nope, we kept hiking on and tried to keep the rain drops off the camera lens. (Not to mention trying not to slip and fall into the creek with camera in hand myself!) And we were rewarded with a beautiful sunset over the lake before heading home again.

This is also an interesting metaphor for your career. Sometimes the path you start out on changes mid-hike, and you have to adjust to some new conditions that you hadn’t planned for. That can be a challenge, certainly, but if you roll with the changes, keep persevering on the path you’ve set for yourself, you may just find some rewarding views on your way.

Sometimes, as an amateur photographer, you find yourself in a situation to shoot some photos, but real life interferes with following “best practices”. Last week was one of those occasions. While at Disney with my wife’s family, especially our 6 year old niece, we decided to stay out at night and catch the fireworks at Magic Kingdom.

Now, under normal circumstances, you’d want a tripod when shooting fireworks, especially fireworks being shot behind and above a fixed object like Cinderella’s Castle the way that the are at the Magic Kingdom. On the other hand, who wants to carry around a tripod in the park all day? And forget about finding a place to setup a full tripod, or even a small tripod, in that crowd. It just isn’t really feasible. So you wind up shooting a bunch of stuff, using a bunch of different settings, and hope that a few turn out half way decent so you can have a nice photo memory of being at Disney.

That’s the nice thing about digital photography. In situations like this, you really can experiment with a number of different settings, and see what turns out best, and you’re really only out the space the photos take on the memory card temporarily. Then, once you have access to a PC monitor, you can delete all of the failed experiments and no one even has to know about those….

Unless you blog about them, of course.

So, what suggestions do you have for those of us who find ourselves in these situations?

This being the day we celebrate all things Irish, I can’t help but be drawn in by looking at the photos I took in the Summer of 2010 while spending a week in Ireland. I think that shows the value not only of travel, but of photography. I have these pictures to remind me of the grand time I had exploring Ireland and Scotland that Summer.

Apparently, while 2011 was a year of huge changes for me, the changes just keep coming in 2012. I won’t be relocating again, but I will be switching jobs, and that is going to also impact what I’m doing on this site. I’ve accepted a Litigation Support Trainer position with AccessData. I’ll be based out of my home office, doing online training and various other projects from there, while also traveling to do onsite training, working at some of the various trade shows, etc.

I’ll also be contributing to AD’s eDiscovery Insight Blog (http://ediscoveryinsight.com/). In the interest of not competing with myself, or with the company that pays my bills, I will not be writing about the legal industry or litigation support on this site any longer, short of pointing you to things I write over there.

What does that mean for mikemcbrideonline.com? I think it goes back to being the blog it started out as all those years ago. A little tech, some geeky stuff, some personal lessons learned about careers and travel, and, of course, photography. I’ll still be sharing interesting articles in the legal and litigation support fields, here and on Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus, along with links to various other things I find interesting. There won’t be a complete purge of all things legal, but it certainly won’t be the main focus the way it has been for the last few years.

If you’ve been coming here for the litigation support stuff, I hope you’ll join us over on eDiscovery Insight, and I hope to be able to continue to share information and insights with you in various ways. If you’ve been following along for years and trying your best to weed through the boring legal stuff, I hope you’ll enjoy the new turn on the site. Just bear with me as I go through an adjustment period and figure out exactly what I’m doing around here.

On a personal note, I’m excited by this new opportunity. I’ll be working with a great team, at a very exciting time in the history of the Summation product line. I’ll be getting a chance to teach others, and help them understand this crazy world of eDiscovery, on a regular basis. It will certainly make for a different 2012 than I was expecting, but a very interesting one too!

Hopefully, I’ll even get a chance to meet up with some of you in my travels, or at trade shows, so stay in touch!

One of my favorite things about living in South Carolina, especially now that I’ve been here awhile and have gotten used to things, are all of the great photo opportunities. Not only do we live close to the mountains, but with the mild weather, there aren’t long stretches of the year where you don’t get outside much.

Also, there is a ton of history in the area to shoot. Previously, we went up to the Cowpens Battlefield, but this weekend we took a short drive up the border of North Carolina. Our first stop was the Poinsett Bridge, built in 1820.

This is in the very corner of Greenville County, and if photography isn’t your thing, this area is becoming somewhat famous as a great year-long training area for professional cyclists. In fact, George Hincapie make his home up here. (No, that’s not him, but we did see quite a few folks cycling for a February morning!)

After a lovely time exploring the bridge and surrounding area, we got back in the car for the short trip to Flat Rock, NC and the Carl Sandburg Home National Historical Site. Not only can you tour the home and learn about the lives of Carl and his wife Lillian, a very accomplished woman in her own right, but the land around the house is a lovely park/hiking area, and the goat farm is still very much in operation. .

You can even hike to the top of Glassy Mountain from here, however with my current struggles with a lingering cough, we thought better of the long, uphill, climb. We’ll save that for another trip up there. Anyone want to come visit and join us?

If that’s not enough to convince you to come, perhaps you should be reading Angela’s blog, which I swear is becoming her own version of Yelp for the Upstate. She’s been out taking photos even more than I have, and of course, she also has details on all the local food establishments that we’ve been trying out as well, in case photography, hiking, cycling and nature isn’t enough to interest you.

For Valentine’s Day this year, the wife and I had one rule. No spending any money.

For her, that meant using some of the crafty things we already had around the house to make something for me, above. For me, heretofore known as the crafting disabled, this provided something of a challenge. Since I love writing, that became my method, but coming up with something new and interesting was the next challenge. So, I decided to do something a little special. Rather than having one note to read, I wanted to send the wife emails throughout the day, some with small love notes, some with Youtube links, some with “virtual coupons” for things like a romantic walk under the stars, a massage, and a bunch of other things.

Of course, since I would be at the office for a good chunk of the day, working, I needed a way to make sure these messages would get delivered. This became a good chance to test out Boomerang, a Gmail add-on that allows you to schedule messages. The free version is limited to 10 per month, but there is an unlimited trial for the first 30 days.

It adds a “Send Later” option to the Gmail interface in Firefox or Chrome. So I was able to spend a couple of days putting together 17 different messages to be delivered to my wife, and she was able to spend Valentine’s Day expectantly waiting for each new message. That’s a win-win to me!

If you have an occasional need to schedule emails to be sent later, check it out!

The lovely, and talented, Annika Vitolo put out the word that she was looking for photos taken in Brooklyn for her latest music video, and who am I to say no to a fellow PS 207 alum? (Annika and I sat next to each other in 6th grade, a “few” years ago.)

Seeing all the video and photos does make me a bit homesick….

I found quite a lot to think about in this TED video. From thinking about how we view the world by the lens we choose to view it with, be it media, news, who we spend our time with, etc. to rethinking the relationship between being productive and being happy. Could we have it backwards? Instead of basing our happiness on meeting goals, are we more likely to meet our goals when we start out happy, with a grateful and joyful attitude? Lastly, can we train ourselves to be extraordinary instead of average by embracing happiness and ignoring “normal”? Personally, I’m going to give Shawn’s advice some serious thought.

This week marks the 261st anniversary of the Battle of Cowpens, a victory for the Americans led by Daniel Morgan, over the British led by Banastre Tarleton. Each year, on the weekend closest to the data of the battle, the national park hosts a weekend-long historical encampment. Despite it being a bit chilly Saturday morning, we hit the road to drive the 45 minutes or so up to Cowpens to learn more about the local history. Of course, we also wanted to get some photos!

Those of you who have seen The Patriot will be familiar with some of the details of this battle, as the final battle of that movie is loosely based on a combination of Cowpens and another battle fought in the Southern Campaign. Namely, the use of militia at the front to draw the British to an unorganized charge over a ridge, where the regular Continental lines were waiting for them just out of sight. That’s about the only true similarity between this battle and the scene from the movie though.

For that matter, if you get the right Ranger guide for your tour, you’ll also learn about all of the other things he thinks popular historians have gotten dead wrong about this battle as well. I can’t speak to everything he told us, but I can tell you that if you read a history that talks about the “hills” the lines were behind, they are incorrect. We’ve been there, there are ridges, but nothing that even resembles a hill! Morgan got there first and used the lay of the land to effectively hide parts of his army in plain sight, by using the slight ridges of the field to keep them out of the British line of sight. We live in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, there are lots of hills near us, not so much when you go over to Cowpens.

So, despite the chill in the air, it was a lovely enough to spend a few hours exploring and learning from some folks dedicated to keeping the history alive!

This has been a bit of an off year for me as a photographer. Dealing with all the changes and challenges of this year has kept me busy, obviously. Not really traveling much this year compared to the last few certainly contributed to that as well. On the other hand, I have spent some time exploring some of area I am now living in, and while I don’t have as many photos to choose from this year, I have many that remind me of the wild ride that has been 2011, and have enough personal meaning to be among my favorites of 2011. I hope you enjoy them as well!