All I can say is wow. Not only is Andy a great musician, he’s also a really great guy – incredibly talented and incredibly humble.

In case you haven’t heard any of Andy’s music, I’ve included his most popular Youtube video of the song Drifting below.

shivs

An Evening with Andy McKee – Images by Shivani Parmar

As a matter of fact, if I thought I could be a decent musician, I’d probably not even be a photographer.

My music choices tend to be pretty eclectic since I’m always exploring what’s out there. I’m actually pretty embarrassed to admit some of the songs I’m in love with at any given time, but now I’ve decided I’m going to start writing what’s on my playlist – who knows, maybe you’ll like some of these songs too.

My first: Pure Imagination (from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) performed by Maroon 5.

I’m in love with this song – just the right blend of creepy and cool (though they could have been even more edgy and it would have still worked). Wish the guitar part was a little better around 2:09, but you know me, my expectations for guitar riffs tend to be pretty high… Enjoy!

shivs

To allow you to enjoy these images on your own PCs, SHIVSPIX is offering a new feature: SHIVSPIX screensavers (work on Windows PCs only). This slideshow is now available as a screensaver that you can download for $7.99** and enjoy anytime! shivs

Download Women’s Team Screensaver

** A portion of the proceeds will be donated to support US National Team Athletes.
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SHIVSPIX Rowing News Photo Essay – Images by Shivani Parmar

As you may have noticed, SHIVSPIX for the past two days had been getting a warning page from Google and Firefox, stating the the site was suspected of distributing malware. As it turns out, my SHIVSPIX site was hacked about 5 days ago, which led to the warning page you saw. All problems have now been fixed, and Google and Firefox have also lifted their warning page.

Thanks so much for bearing with me for the past couple days. Please know I take this site very seriously and would never intentionally distribute any kind of malicious material. I apologize for any inconvenience the past couple of days may have caused you, and I hope you continue to visit the site, and enjoy the images and blogs you find here. Thanks again,

shivs

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Update 9:50pm: This note I think was a little premature. Just as I posted it, things started acting up again. Thanks so much for your patience as I work through this!

Update May 27 10:45am: Up and running again :-)

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Hi All!

A lot has been going on behind the scenes of SHIVSPIX for the past couple weeks. Lots of experimenting and testing of new ideas, as well as some photo shoots.

The first of many things to be available in the coming weeks are SHIVSPIX Personas. Firefox users are now able to customize their web browsers with “personas”. They can be downloaded for free from the main Firefox page. I’m still testing out images, so there will be more varieties of images to choose from soon, but for now, I’d love your feedback before opening it up and making them available to the whole Team USA page. Any problems downloading? Is the image hard to see?

Just visit the SHIVSPIX Persona page and role over the image to see if you like how it looks on your web browser. If you like it, just click on “Wear it”, and Voila!

As a note, this only works if you use Firefox, and not on Safari or Internet Explorer unfortunately.

Let me know what you think!

shivs

ps: You might want to check out some of the other Personas out too. There’s some real creativity out there!

Starting with the bad news, my hard drive crashed.

It’s bound to happen to everyone at some point. After my software crash last year, when I lost the entire rowing book and had to start over completely, I’ve always been a little skeptical of my computer. And sure enough, this week my hard drive crash proved just why. After several hours with the folks over at Geek Squad, I was told they were unable to recover anything from the hard drive and the only thing they could do was put in a new (completely blank) hard drive.

The only reason I can say this all so calmly is because I have four amazing Lacie external hard drives sitting in front of me right now that have 97% of my work backed up. So while I’m not looking forward to all of the software installation and catalog importing that awaits me next week, I can say that I’m still sleeping quite soundly at night.

Instead of sitting here and bashing my PC, although I am officially converting to a Mac the first chance I get, I would like to take a few minutes to show my appreciation to Lacie and the amazing external hard drives they build. I’ve got four. Three with my music,  photos, videos and documents on them, and one massive Lacie backing up what is on the other three externals.  They are amazing.  The design is simple and beautiful. There’s the Rugged, which is what I take on all my travels since it’s small, and like the name says, very Rugged. There’s my Brick, which is quite literally like a Brick, and sits on my desk. And then there’s the two designed by Neil Poulton, which are sleek and sturdy. I love them. They are amazing. I could go on, but you get the point.

In conclusion, I’ll say, please back up your work peoples! And if you’re looking for a good external, take a look at Lacie drives.

As for me, I’ll be working off a 7 year old Toshiba for the next one week, so please bear with me.

shivs

Nobody plays Soul Serenade quite like Derek Trucks and his band. This is hands down the best version I’ve ever heard of the King Curtis classic. Unfortunately the recording isn’t that great since it’s from a live performance and the speakers cut in and out a bit. But it’s still the best version I’ve ever heard. Below is the recording (it’s 10 minutes long, but so worth it).

By the way, you can hear lots of full recordings of the Derek Trucks band on the official Derek Trucks website.

If you get a chance, definitely also listen to Duane Allman’s version of Soul Serenade too, which happens halfway through the song You Don’t Love Me (Dreams disc).

(As a note, King Curtis died in 1971. He was stabbed to death in front of his apartment. The story goes that it was during a heat wave and he was bringing back an air conditioner to his home. There were two guys shooting drugs on his front stoop who refused to get out of his way. They got into an argument and, well, one thing led to another. King Curtis’s funeral was led by a young Rev. Jesse Jackson, and an hour-long version of Soul Serenade was played. The intro to You Don’t Love Me by Duane is referencing this incident. -Sorry, just can’t seem to find the right online recording of it but I’ll post it if I do find it.)

shivs

The new integrated SHIVSPIX Galleries have made it possible for me to add slideshows to my blog posts. This way you’ll be able to see the new images without having to navigate to a new page.

Monterey Bay – Images by Shivani Parmar

Here are some cool slideshow features I’d like to point out:

Image Captions – Rolling over the images in the slideshow will allow you to read captions for the image (if the image has a caption)

Images - Clicking on the image will take you directly to the image in the galleries section.

Thumbnails – On the bottom left, you can click on the word “THUMBS” which will bring up a reel of thumbnails and help you scroll through the slideshow.

Arrows – On the bottom right, you can click on the arrows to move forward or back in the slideshow. The numbers tell you how many images are in the slideshow and which number image you are on.  Clicking on the number allows you to pause the slideshow.

Thumbnail Chart – Clicking on the Tic-Tac-Toe like button on the bottom right will bring up all the thumbnails for the images in the slideshow. Click on it again, and it will take you back to the slideshow.

Envelop – Clicking on the envelop allows you to share the gallery with your friends and families.

Below the slideshow is the gallery name. Click on it to be taken directly to the gallery in the SHIVSPIX galleries section.

Hopefully this new slideshow feature will make it easier for you to view images, rather than having to jump to another page. Let me know what you think! I’d love to have your feedback.

shivs

ps: The images above were taken while I was in Monterey, California, for Simon and Megan’s wedding. After the wedding, I had a day to enjoy the sights of Monterey Bay. Of course, I went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where I ended up spending most of my day. My favorite exhibit: the Shark Tank! No surprises there I’m sure.

As you will quickly notice, the new Galleries section is not finished yet, but I wanted to get it running so you could test it out. Please play around and let me know what you think. If there are some things that are confusing or could be improved, definitely let me know.

Here is a quick tour of the new Galleries section:

In the navigation bar, you will see there’s now a lot more under the Galleries tab. Clicking on ‘ORIGINAL GALLERIES’ will take you to the old SHIVSPIX Galleries at www.shivspixgallery.com.

New Archive Home: This is the new home base for my images and allows you to find images organized by collections. At the bottom of the page, you will be able to see which galleries were most recently added or updated.

Lightbox: Create a lightbox of your favorite images. To do this, you will have to create a (free) account so your settings can be saved.

Gallery List: This page will list ALL of the galleries on the site.

Advanced Search: This is something I am very excited to debut. A much much better search feature than the old site has. All images will be tagged by keywords, and have titles and captions, which will be searched by this feature. Type in your names, events, or even dates to search for relevant images.

Cart: You will now be able to purchase images from rowing events directly from the site.

Member Area: Once you sign up for your free member account, you will be able to have your own area that shows your lightboxes, as well as any invitation-only galleries you may have access to.

Sign Up: This section is so you can sign up for your free account.

What do you think?

I am in the process of migrating images and will post updates as galleries are added.

In the meantime, enjoy playing around!

shivs

If you like these, you should definitely check out the CandyRat video collection.

Hope you enjoy!

shivs