2008 Christmas Pictures

December Snow 2008

Patricks Birthday

At our favorite Chinese restaurant celebrating Patricks 17th birthday.

San Francisco 2008 - Mashup

Another great keynote

This surgeon recommends games as a teaching tool. Great presentations.

Pictures from San Francisco

At LERN Conference

Opening keynote speaker with over 1000 in attendance. She is kind of
funny, which is good for 8:30am on a Sunday morning.

Patrick Singing the National Anthem

This is awesome! Great video of Patrick singing of the National Anthem at school.

First car pic

Well, he bought it. Here's patrick in his Honda minutes after purchase
waititing to get onto the ferry.

Buying a car

The crew and I went to Kingston to look at a used Honda for patrick
today. Hopefully the car was worth the trip.

The World of Fundriving: New Appearances on TV!

The World of Fundriving: New Appearances on TV!

New Appearances on TV!

I am doing some guest appearances on Experience NW discussing social media. This video contains my first interview. It's starts about 2.5 minutes into the clip.

Social Media Conference in Bellingham from ENW with Deb Slater on Vimeo.

Flowers of Summer 2008: A Slide Show

Time to Write Some Emails

700 Billion Dollars.  That's $2300 for every man, woman, and child in the United States.  700 Billion is what the mortgage bailout that certain government officials are planning.  

The current plan as it's stands is very scary.  It gives a lot of power over the financial markets to just a couple people, it lets banks and others that caused the problems off the hook with no penalties.  It also doesn't have any protection or cures for those that are troubled with mortgages they cannot pay.

Congress is not happy, in fact, both sides of the aisle have serious concerns with this bailout.  We need to take this opportunity and support our congressmen as they bailout is shaped and eventually passed.  Email your congressmen and ask for the following be included in the bailout:

• Equity stakes in banks that are are bailed out.  If we buy the bad mortgages, we should take an equity stake in those banks.  This ensures the country gets paid back for the bailout and punishes the players for the mess in our financial markets.  This happened in Sweden, they were out of it and paid back in less than five years.
• Over-site.  Lots of oversight.  This bailout should not be overseen by one person.  there should be over-site every step of the way.  Good reporting, clear guidelines, and over-site from people not tied to the mess.
• Relief for individuals who own mortgages.  If we are going to help wall-street, we need to help main-street.  We should bailout the situation from top to bottom.
• ???? Anything that you believe strongly in.

I urge you to use the link below and write a quick email to your congressmen now.  If we act now, we may be able to stand with congress and make the right choices for are country at this critical juncture.

This link will take you to a list of of congressmen for all fifty states.  http://www.conservativeusa.org/mega-cong.htm

  Pass this email and suggestion on to other people you know.  Remember, This is our chance to make a change.

Thanks for listening

Greg Marshall

Gotta Love Sunsets

I love sun on the water. This was a picture that I took this summer from the top of the Deception pass bridge.

Yes, I am at a Concert

Most of you don't know that I like classical music. Live classical is
a special treat I don't get to enjoy very often.

One of the world-class Finnish orchestras is performing tonight and
the promoters wife is a friend. Sooo....off to the concert!

Daytrip to Winthrop

Drove up to Winthrop with Patrick and my dad to shoot some pictures and hang out. Enjoyed a great afternoon of both driving and picture taking.

Anacortes and the Happy Donkey

A couple great pictures from a trip to Anacortes.

Finally getting some nice flower pictures. These are pictures from the flower gardens in Everett. Click on the slide show for bigger images.

Cops Bust Street Racers

Checkout this video of the Kent cops rounding up street racers and spectators. Its like a scene from a movie, with cars going everywhere trying to escape. Cops win this one!

http://www.kirotv.com/video/17001345/

Northwest Trek

Finally finished my Northwest Trek photos...for the moment. Enjoy! Remember to click on the slideshow to see the individual pictures.

Fourth of July Pictures

Finally got my pictures done from the fourth. It's always hard to shoot these images. It's completely dark so I am shooting at a high "ISO" rate. It's also hard for the camera to auto-focus when it can't see anything.

When the pictures do come out right the fireworks look really cool.

First HDR Picture Attempt

This is my first HDR picture attempt. HDR, or High Dynamic Range is a slightly different way to take a picture. Basically you take 3-7 pictures at different exposures and use Photoshop to merge the images together. Because of the multiple exposures, you have a lot more detail in the picture making for more realism. You can then take and tweak the picture in different ways even creating a "hyper-realism" level.

You don't take a volume of these suckers! Besides having to take 3-7 pictures with a tripod, it takes at least twenty minutes to process the final image.

Berthusen Park

Needed to get out and shoot some pictures today. Went to Berthusen Park to shoot some tractor and steam engine parts. Still a month or so away from flowers at any of our normal picture taking places. It's sure a strange start to summer.

Sturgeon Fishing: Slideshow

Fishing falls

We were fishing just below these falls.

Oh yeah

What a day. The sun came out, its getting warm and we caught our fish.
What a way to spend a Saturday.

Hotel Sturgeon

Finally made it to our hotel. This is the view from our room. We leave
at 5am tomorrow morning. I guess those fishies don't sleep in on the
weekend!

Wishing for Summer

Visited some flower gardens in Everett. Boy, I wish summer would hit. flowers are still rare and the flowers that are blooming just don't have the full "flowery" look for pictures.

Decided to do a little Photoshop magic on this picture. Didn't have much else to show for the trip.

Another Groovy Car

Another groovy car picture to go with the purple Studebaker I posted awhile back. Still expiermenting with groovy backgrounds and and graffiti look.

New Orleans

In New Orleans for a meeting. Unfortunatly, its a down and back. This
is the only tourist picture I am going to get!

The Kids Singing

Sehome Choir performing the national anthem

Sonic Game on Friday

Went to a Sonics game Friday. Sehome High choir was singing and
Patrick is part of that action. Yao Ming the 7.5 foot basketball
player is playing for the rockets tonight.

My Buddy and I Went Drive'n

Patrick and I took both Subaru's out for a drive. What a blast! Went and did some of our favorite roads. Communicated with cell phones and wireless headsets. With gas prices as high as they are, we won't be doing this very often, but it sure was fun!

Coos Bay Jaunt

The End

Its 9:50 and we are home, showered, and in bed. 700+ miles in this
adventure with only marginal success. Time for bed. Will work on
pictures tomorrow.

From the road on my phone. greg@fundriving.com

Found Wood

Found the wood... or what's left of it. The beach has been scavenge
clean and the sand is already filling back in. The tide was also
partway in and covering other interests. The only wood left was in the
sandstone.

Its noon

Noon, and were up to Tillamook. Another two hours until the forest.
Hope we make it.

From the road on my phone. greg@fundriving.com

Ms's diner

Ate breakfast at ma's diner. Pretty good food and your only choice at
six am in North Bend Oregon.

Conquilla River lighthouse

No boat wreck, but, a nice lighthouse I haven't seen before.

Doom and gloom

Seems the ship we were after is only four-by accessible or a EIght
mile hike. The one mile is at the end of the four wheel track.
Amazing the details you don't get from the paper or the Internet.
Going after a different ship a local told us about. Its new but didn't
hit the paper.

Finally Portland

Finally in Oregon only an hour behind schedule because of traffic.
Going to be a long night.

diet coke... Geek fuel

Body fuel

2.5 hours on the road and only 116 miles...sigh. I hate Seattle traffic.

Only to Seattle

Rocket chocolate

On the road.

Groov'n Rods #1

First modified car image in my continuous quest to expand my PhotoShop skills. Still playing with various brushes and layers. Still not happy with what to do with "ground" in my pictures.

Enjoy!

Chasing Flock'n birds across Skagit County

It was a great day Saturday to chase birds. Was looking to get a few more great pictures of the large flocks before they breakup for the season. The large flocks were already gone and we just got pictures of individual birds. Still a entertaining day.

The Big City

I have been experimenting with composite pictures and other techniques other than my normal photography so that I can expand my skills and creativity.

"The Big City" is a collection of buildings shot in down-town Seattle combined into one image. I was going for a bold, hand-painted look.

Enjoy!

Birds, Birds, and More Birds

Tons of birds around today. Went out onto the Chuckanut flats and over to LaConner. Found the main flock of Snow Geese as well as a stray duck and Heron.

Eagles on the Skagit

Went up Highway 20 past Concrete looking for Eagles to shoot. Slim pickings today as the weather was really bad. Clouds obscured most of the ground and the tops of trees. Reports said their were over 200 Eagles nesting along that stretch. I saw maybe 20. Like me, the birds were wet and miserable.

Besides the birds, cars were everywhere and boats were zipping up and down the river. Counted as many boats as birds. The noise from the boats were probably keeping most of the birds farther up river.

These were the best two shots I got. Not a very good day for such a long drive.

First Pictures of Greg's New Toy

Well, we did it. Finally got a new car like Alana and I have been talking about. Surprisingly we didn't go with one of the expensive cars we had been looking at. (Cadillac CTS, BMW 328xi) Decided to get a Subaru WRX.

I like Subies and I wanted all wheel drive and a stick shift. I also wanted a easy payment. What will shock most people is we traded the Mini Cooper in for it! Wanted a better traveling car. This new car is no performance slouch and is much faster than the Mini with a inter-cooled turbo-charged generating 256 horsepower! Couple that with all-wheel drive, traction control, anti-lock breaks, and a six speed manual shift and you have a real performance car.

Anyway, there be some performance pictures as the weather allows. Enjoy your new years.