December, 2008

12/26 Grandma and Ivan

Visited the family over the holidays; was great to be back home! This is a photo of my grandmother and my cousin's kid, Ivan. Click the photo to see a short video clip

12/22 Sable and Abbey in the Snow

Siberians in Snow from Shane Parker on Vimeo.

September, 2008

9/16 James & April - A Lesson In Light

Today I had the pleasure of shooting a couple of muscians. I rarely post my actual photography jobs to my blog (I need to more often) but this one turned out to be a perfect example of why it's a good idea to convince your clients to make time for the right time of day.

Click Here to see the shoot.

9/16 My First Groupie!

Abbey likes to listen to the funny sounds coming out of my Peavey amp.

Click Here to see a larger photo.

August, 2008

8/7 Sable & Abbey at Kelley Point Park

Took the dogs to the park, they had fun!

Click Here to see the photos.

May, 2008

5/28 New Gibson Les Paul Studio

I've wanted a Gibson Les Paul for quite some time (Obviously I wanted a Custom, but that would really break the bank!) I stumbled upon this little beauty and once I heard it I couldn't leave without it.

Click Here to see more photos of the new guitar.

5/12 New Puppy!

I have wanted an AKC-papered Siberian Husky for a long time. However, the breeders that I contacted locally either had no litters coming up or every puppy was already called for. A couple of months ago, I contacted a breeder that I had been in contact with previously (tovik.com) and was able to work it out so that I could buy one of their puppies. Her name is "Abbey" and so far she's been awesome! Click Here to see more photos of Abbey.

March, 2008

3/30 IRL in Miami

A quick note on this years Indy Racing League. I watched the race in Miami on Sunday and WOW this is going to be an exciting season! I was cheering for Marco and the kid almost made it. And how about that Dan Wheldon going from last place to within top ten in 11 laps! And to top it all off, Champ Car and IRL are finally merging... it"s about damned time! Anyway, this should be a very exciting year indeed.

January, 2008

1/25 Portland Auto Show

Very upset with the auto show this year! They didn't have any of the cool new cars and concepts because the "big" auto shows got first pick. Mitsubishi didn't even show up and I was really looking forward to viewing the new EVO X. I also attended on Saturday (worst day for photos because of the crowds) so these are just quick snapshots. Click Here to see the cars.

1/24 Multnomah Falls in Winter

Multnomah in her semi-frozen state; gorgeous as always. Click Here to see the falls.

1/20 Portland Dog Show

Stopped by the Portland Dog show for a bit and shot the Great Pyrenees, Siberian and Malamute Husky breeds. Gorgeous dogs as always. Click Here to see the dogs.

December, 2007

12/17 Happy Holidays!

Last year I got away without doing any decorations. The little lady is making me pay for it this year though! Click Here to see the decorations.

12/08 An early xmas gift!

I decided to give Stacey her xmas gift early. Click Here to see the photos.

12/07 Mary and Terry Boyd!

What a good lookin' couple! Click Here to see the Boyds.

November, 2007

11/24 The Porters

I had the pleasure of photographing my wonderful grandparents over Thanksgiving weekend. Click Here to see the photos.

11/12 The StupidFilter Project

If there is a god, this project will succeed. Click Here to read about it.

11/01 Shedding season is here; yippee!

Thank god this only happens twice per year. Click Here to see more hair than dog.

October, 2007

10/20 Kansas City Wedding - Will and Hope Nicely

Had a great time in Kansas City. I met a lot of good people. Click Here to see the photos.

10/8 Paintball

Me and a few buds have been playing paintball on the weekends; super fun and lots of exercise. Click Here to see the new gun.

September, 2007

09/3 New Plasma!

Picked up a new Panasonic 50" Plasma and Logitech Harmony 880 remote over the Labor Day weekend. Click Here to see the photos.

August, 2007

08/16 I am 94% Megatron

In case any of you wonder what my personality is like, apparently I am like the Transformer, Megatron :~)

I AM 94% MEGATRON

Take the Transformers Quiz

08/05 Oregon Coast Vacation

My nephew, Austin, is visiting this week and we went camping over on the coast. Didn't get a chance to shoot much, but I did snap a few of him. Click Here to see the photos.

July, 2007

07/30 Street of Dreams

Street of Dreams was pretty good this year. There were only six houses compared with 8 or more in previous years. Click Here to see the photos.

07/20 Poster Contest

Vote for me! I have a small crush on Avril Lavigne (yes, it's true) so I whipped up this line art design from her 'boyfriend' video to submit to Pandora for their poster contest. Click Here and then press "Love It" to vote for my poster. Click Here to see a larger version of the artwork.

07/18 Puppy Art

I just finished this line art piece in Photoshop. The dog is a Siberian Husky named "Sable." view original photo and larger version

07/11 Instruments

The new guitar inspired me to take some more photos of other musical instruments. check out the photos

07/05 New Guitar

I've been playing electric guitar for a couple years now and have always wanted to learn acoustic. So I picked up this little gem at the Guitar Center for a great price. Looks great and sounds good (especially plugged in). check out the photos

07/03 Lego Chess

I have an obsession with various toys that I used to play with in my childhood. One of those obsessions is Legos. My wonderful woman brought this set home for me tonight; ain't she sweet! check out the photos

07/01 New site is online!

The new site should be up and working. I haven't edited any of the gallery and other sub-pages yet. But the main site should be working. Again, please contact me if you run into any glitches. You can view the old site here to compare.

June, 2007

06/28 New website Design

I've decided to update my site once again. I'll be uploading portions of it at a time, please let me know if anything is not working as it should.

06/19 My First Day with Windows Vista Business Edition

I've had a free copy of Vista Business Edition for a few months now and decided to install it this morning since I had nothing better to do (ya right!). I've been working on Vista for most of the day now and have a few first impressions.

1. It truly is an annoying OS. Every time you try to do ANYTHING it asks three different times if you're sure you want to. I got so tired of it that I've already disabled this 'feature'. I've also disabled the security center warnings. This OS has way too many annoying warnings out of the box.
2. It's no faster than XP. In fact, sitting idle with no programs open it uses 20-25% more RAM than XP did, and opening/closing/using stuff is no faster than XP and in some cases is slower.
3. The eye candy is nice... but I don't give a damn about it. In fact, I've already disabled a good majority of it to try and speed things up. I use these things for work and speed rules.
4. I've had three driver issues; one with soundcard, one with 1394 card, and one I still haven't tracked down (PCI Input device). There is no driver for the 1394 card but I was able to install an XP driver for my sound card. It is working, but I don't have a lot of faith that it is working correctly or efficiently. Luckily, sound cards are cheap.
5. I've only installed and had time to play with Office 2003 and Photoshop CS2; both of which seem to be working fine. I've yet to install and use any other apps that I use for work on a daily basis.
6. Widgets are fine and I actually find them useful (I like knowing the weather 24/7 because of the outdoor stuff I do and having current news on display is nice too). However, I had even more options with Yahoo Widgets on XP, so this isn't really anything new and is a step back because of the lack of widgets that are currently available.
7. The way Windows Explorer works is kind of annoying until you get used to it. In some ways it's better, in others it's worse. Hard to explain unless you actually use it.
8. The "window switcher" is nifty to watch (allows you to scroll through all open windows) but I find it completely useless. If I need to open a background window I simply click that windows tab on the taskbar (duh!) I would have liked to see some sort of multiple desktop implementation instead (seriously, they STILL don't have this feature?!)
9. The indexed searching feature is still useless to me. It's a bit faster, but it still (as far as I can tell) doesn't search through things like email (which would be most useful for me). I could be wrong on that, if I am, please tell me how to get it to search emails!
10. It has crashed three times since installing it this morning. Two times happened on shutdown after installing programs and drivers; it recovered fine and hasn't had issues on shutdown since.The other time happened while I was a away from my desk and I came back to a "windows has recovered from a serious error..." message. I don't have a lot of faith in the stability of this product yet.

All in all, it's definitely not a 'needed' upgrade. I can't think of one single reason a person would NEED to upgrade from XPpro. When I think back to when XP came out, I NEEDED to upgrade because Windows98se wasn't stable enough and many programs were no longer supported on it; not to mention the security issues. Win2k was (and still is) a great OS, but I had many driver and software issues with it when it came to using multimedia stuff. Windows ME was a heaping pile of crap. XPpro, after SP1, was a great OS and SP2 made it even better; it was truly a 'needed' upgrade for me. But Vista really doesn't provide ANY performance enhancements (in fact, I'd say it's a bit slower), it provides NO productivity enhancements for getting my daily work done, and there is nothing 'groundbreaking' in it. In fact, I was really hoping that there would be some sort of 'gee-whiz factor' since I'm a geek and appreciate that sort of stuff... but I have yet to run into it.

Will I keep using it? Sure, I got this copy for free and as long as it doesn't hinder my work I'll use it. However, if it keeps crashing or I find that some of my important apps won't work with it... bye bye Vista. I have XPpro on an alternate HDD ready to be installed if need be.

Would I actually buy this thing if it weren't free? Hell freakin' no! There is NOTHING worthwhile that I can do with this OS that I can't do on XPpro natively or saddled with 3rd party programs.

Here's a link to an article that talks about the speed of Vista -vs- XP which basically supports my findings: Link to Conclusion

May 2007

05/13 Photoshoot :: Stacey's Headshots

05/11 - 12 BarCamp Portland

"Tech + Geek + Culture. The event for the Portland tech community, produced BY the Portland tech community. Interesting topics, cool people, great networking opportunities, wifi, and free food (don't forget the bubble tea!)."

Please pass the word; the more the merrier! I will be photographing this event.

Location: CubeSpace

April 2007

04/22 Oregon Tulip Festival

Gorgeous as always!

February 2007

02/16 Portland Rod and Custom Show

Not as good a turn out as last year. However, the Barry White '32 Ford Roadster was incredible!

January 2007

01/25 Lincoln City Vacation

Click Here for Photos

01/04 staceyboyd.com site design.

Executive website.