While in London this week, I had a very stark reminder of some very old, but wise, advice about shooting with SLR cameras, digital or otherwise. The advice I’ve heard from way back in the days of shooting with a film SLR was to always keep one hand on the camera. As sturdy as they are, straps break, or just come loose. When it happens, you’ll be glad you had a hand on the camera.

As it turns out, my wife was kind enough to let me borrow her Nikon D5100. In the midst of trying to take advantage of the little free time I had while in London, I had to catch the Underground over to the Tower Bridge. With the camera around my neck, and a crowd of people heading to the entrance, I let go in order to fumble around for my pass. Of course, this was the moment that one of the camera straps came loose. Luckily I felt it coming loose with enough time to stick out my elbow, and lessen the fall. Instead of falling lens first, and fast, it fell slowly and landed on the bottom of the camera body. In the end, it was just a bit of a bump, no damage done. Obviously, this was a huge relief to me, as well as the young lady walking opposite me, who’s gasp and horrified facial expression could not be missed as this was happening.

Sometimes it’s easy to get focused on getting the perfect shot. I often worry about taking photos in a strange and busy place like London, because you have to keep your wits about you, and pay attention to the immediate environment, and not focus too much on what’s in the lens finder. While doing all of that though, take the occasional peek at the straps, and a hand on the camera body, too, ok? Let my scare be a reminder for you. If I hadn’t gotten a lucky bounce of the elbow, the only photos of the Tower Bridge I would have gotten would have been with my iPhone. And, I’d be buying my wife a new camera.

Yesterday I was startled to receive a notification on my phone that my Facebook account had been disabled. The notification advised me to login using a computer to get more information.

When I had a chance to do that, it became clear that someone had logged into my FB account, from a completely different location than the devices that FB already knew about an with an unrecognized device. Sensing that my account password had somehow been compromised, they went ahead and disabled it, then gave me the option to change my password in order to enable it again.

Not a bad move by Facebook, IMHO. Of course it got me thinking, as much as I travel and use airport and/or hotel wifi, should I make changing my social network passwords a monthly event or something along those lines? I’m considering it.

So, one of the cool things about traveling in 2013 is that a smartphone or an iPad make it really easy to stay in touch without having to pull out my overly large work laptop. (Seriously, it’s impossible for me to work on my laptop on an airplane, there simply isn’t enough space, and it’s more work than it’s worth much of the time in airports or even hotel rooms.)

That’s great, except for one thing. I really hate trying to type on any of these gadgets. Oh it’s easy enough for a quick text message, or short email, but longer emails to friends, coworkers, or blog posts are just difficult for me. So those things tend to get put off until I’m sitting in my office with my desk and a full keyboard to work with. One of the things I’ve since realized though, is that habit of putting those things off, has led to me not blogging nearly as much, and not keeping in touch the way I want to. I see something on my iPad that sparks an idea for a blog post, I put it off, telling myself I’ll write about it when I am next on my laptop, and then I forget what I was going to write about. Sound familiar?

In an effort to try and get out of this rut, I went out and picked up an Apple bluetooth keyboard to use with my iPad. At least this way, when I’m just using the iPad because it’s easier, if I want to write something more significant, I can pull out a small, lightweight keyboard instead of struggling with the native keyboard to iOS. I’ve already seen myself using it here and there when sitting around the house, and I used it in a hotel right after purchasing it. The big test may come this upcoming week, to see if I can pull it out at an airport, or even on an airplane, and actually get something done more than flipping through Flipboard and Facebook. We’ll see if that become my new normal.

Anyone else out there struggling with the ease of carrying around a tablet, with the difficulty of typing anything on them as much as I do? Any suggestions on how to deal with it?

Sorry for the downtime yesterday, and for not being able to explain it until now. It appears that there is a pretty significant botnet attack being directed against WordPress sites, and all of the brute force login attempts were making sites unresponsive.

In order to get the sites back online my host blocked access to the login page. That was great for getting the site online, not so good for me wanting to post any updates, since no one could login.

The hosting company has been great though, and devised a workaround where I’m logging into the site using a renamed login page. Depending on what this might break, I might just consider telling them to leave it this way.

Thanks for getting me back in Jodohost!

Yes, this is me catching up with all the photos I took since the beginning of the year, finally! We spent a weekend down in Savannah back in January. I have never been before, but had always wanted to get the chance to shoot some of the old historic neighborhood. I knew the squares would provide some great opportunities, not to mention the old houses, the Spanish Moss, and on and on.

The city did not disappoint.

Even the weather did not disappoint, with the sun being out bright, and providing a nice counter to the canopy of the trees all around the area. When you throw in a cathedral, a riverfront, and numerous parks and cemeteries to explore, what is there not to love for a photographer?

All in all, I enjoyed the visit to Savannah and would definitely go back. It’s a fun place, there’s a ton of great places to eat, drink, and have fun, as well as some great history and natural beauty. So even if you aren’t looking for a great place to take photos, which Savannah very much is, you should consider a visit. When we go back, I think we need to schedule a ghost tour, and perhaps some time to relax and enjoy a  drink or two.

You can check out the full set from the weekend over on Flickr!

One of the great joys of living near the mountains, and also in the mild climate of South Carolina, is the chance to simply take any random Saturday, grab the camera gear and do a little hiking/photowalking/exploring around the area, even in the middle of January.

Back before my work traveling got crazy, and I didn’t even have time to post photos let alone spend as much time outdoors as I would like, we headed out to the Blue Wall Preserve, a nature preserve that happens to also be part of the Palmetto Trail. It was a gray day, and maybe not the best for getting interesting shots, but it was also warm and easy enough to drive up there and walk around without getting chilled, which makes it automatically 10 times better than trying to get out and shoot photos in some other areas of the country.

Even with the grayness though, there’s always a chance to experiment and do some interesting things with a camera, and a chance to experiment around a bit with adjustments in Lightroom to either make up for the gray, or get some nice black and white photos.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a Winter day. You can check out the handful of photos I posted from this trip over at Flickr.

Recently, a friend contacted my wife and I asking about good places to start a blog. The request reminded me that while I had seen many articles talking about the success of Tumblr as a blogging platform and a community, I really hadn’t spent any time trying to figure out what the appeal is. So, in the interest of sating my curiosity about Tumblr, and to have a little bit of fun, I have started a Tumblr blog, Mikemac on Sports.

Obviously, the goal here is to just have something to play around with and to have it be something different from my WordPress sites. So I decided to just be a sports fan over there and have fun with it. If you want to follow it over there and talk sports a bit, c’mon over and check it out, and we can learn a bit more about Tumblr while we’re doing that.

An annual tradition around here is to put together a Flickr Set of my favorite photos from the past year. 2012 was a busy, busy year and brought about some very unexpected changes for me professionally, ones that caused our lives to be much different than we expected too! Your personal life can’t help but be impacted when you start traveling as part of your job.

So, for the year 2012, here are my favorites pics. Click the play button to view as a slideshow, or simply browse through all 42 of them at your own speed. You can also view them on Flickr if you don’t have Flash available.

As I look forward to 2013, I realize that for all the traveling I do, I rarely bring anything more than my iPhone for taking photos, and rarely even pull that out. I need to change that. I should be trying to take advantage of being in different places and try to create more photo memories of those trips. Granted, it can be hard to do when you spend all day in front of a group of folks, but I should be thinking more about taking photos while out walking around as opposed to waiting until it’s vacation time and I have my DSLR with me. At least that will be the goal, so perhaps the collection of 2013 will have more iPhone/Instagram photos as I capture what I happen to see!

Thanks for following along here on this little site, whether you’ve been here for years, or just discovered it in 2012. I hope 2013 is going to be a great year for you!

A couple of observations about shooting at the beach over the Christmas weekend:

1. Off-season is a great time to photograph a beach. It is much easier to get landscape and seabird shots when they are only a handful of people within sight of you along the beach.

2. On the other hand, the lack of people can also be detrimental. Sometimes it’s the lone figure that can help give the shot a sense of scope. Sometimes it’s fun to get some photos of people playing in the surf. You don’t get those in the Winter months!

3. Having shot beaches on both coasts, people on the West Coast have it easy. The sun sets over the ocean as opposed to rising on the East Coast. On the West Coast I could roll out to Ocean Beach in the evening, at Myrtle Beach you have to get up pretty early to really catch the sun out over the water!!

4. After you’ve gotten up and captured the sun coming up, and maybe taken a few other photos during the day, the beach is the beach. There are only so many pictures of the surf that I want to spend my time taking. Put the camera down and enjoy your beach vacation, or get off the beach and enjoy some of the surrounding area, like we did with Brookgreen Gardens.

As a photographer, can there be anything better than a place with decades old live oaks, various works of art laid out among a garden with water fountains, an old rice patty tidal creek, an aviary and a few Christmas decorations thrown in?

Plus, seeing, and photographing, everything also led to something along the lines of 5-10 miles of walking, giving you some much needed exercise during the holidays. I can definitely think of worse ways to spend the Sunday before Christmas. Angela and I both really enjoyed the chance to shoot there and spend all day exploring it.

Seriously, if you find yourself near Myrtle Beach, and get tired of shooting at the beach (more on that later….), Brookgreen is  a great place to get a variety of shots, and learn a little local history as well. You can see my full set over at Flickr.