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

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

I’m excited to announce a new SHIVSPIX feature: the new Team USA page.

The page is dedicated to the many amazing athletes on the US team. There is a lot that they do that often goes under the radar, so this page is meant to promote what they do, both on and off the water. I will be adding photo galleries in the coming weeks, so the page is pretty bare right now. But be sure to keep coming back as more things get added.

To get to the Team USA page, go to the navigation bar above and look under “TEAM PAGES”. You will find the Team USA link there. Or you can go there directly with the URL www.shivspix.com/usa.

shivs

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I mentioned earlier this year that I would be slowly unveiling some new website features, and here is the first of them.

I’ve created a SHIVSPIX Video Gallery, which will be a little home for the videos I am putting together. You can get to the gallery by clicking on “VIDEOS” in the navigation bar above. The navigation bar has also been reorganized a little, making room for the Team Pages section, which will be coming soon.

In the meantime, check out the new Video Gallery section and please let me know if you find any broken links or have any suggestions.

shivs

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It’s madness, I know, but after a lot of thought, I’ve decided to give SHIVSPIX another makeover. This one will be a lot less drastic and focus more on expanding the site rather than completely changing it.

The main reason for this is because I’ve been getting a lot of photo related requests, and as those of you who have written to me know, I’ve had a hard time keeping up with a lot of the requests. The new site will make a lot of features more automated and you’ll be able to order photos directly from the site, rather than sending me your requests. This should make the photo ordering process a lot more simple, efficient, and ultimately much faster for you.

As for the site changes, I’ll be extending the site rather than building something entirely new. The galleries section will get reworked so they are more integrated into the site, instead of taking you to the old gallery site. There will be slideshows directly integrated into the pages, and there will also be a way to see the images larger. Lastly, I’ve already started building team pages and a video gallery section. The extensions will be added one piece at a time over the next several weeks rather than over the course of a weekend, since that didn’t really work out so well last time. In other words, I won’t be taking this site down to make changes, and you can keep on coming here, maybe even play a round of Where is Waldo to see if you can catch the changes ;-)

That all being said, don’t worry, the book is still on my high priority list. But I just want to make sure I’m not loosing track of the requests that people are emailing me in the meantime. Ultimately, the new site should make everything much easier and efficient. And after that, there will be NO MORE site relaunches for a while (I think). I’m hoping the new site will carry us through the London Olympics. Taking care of the site now will allow me to keep my focus on photography when the rowing season starts picking up again.

As always, keep sending me your suggestions and requests.

Happy New Year if I don’t talk to you before then!

shivs

I began photographing the US National Team guys at the Princeton Training Center in June 2006, with the idea of documenting their training leading into the August World Championships in Eton, England. I realized pretty fast that much of the preparation for Worlds had already been done way before I had showed up and I would have to spend more time with the team if I truly wanted to do it right.

So what started as a fun summer idea has now turned into a three year project, and what was supposed to be a simple photo essay is now shaping into a 400 page book, developed out of 97,000 pictures and 40 interviews, each about 3 hours in length.

The photo-documentary is now in its final stages. I have to choose and get approval for the individual quotes taken from the interviews, and finish laying out the book. Oh, and also come up with a title. Yes, it’s still a lot of work, but I can finally see the finish line now, and that’s a relief.

For some background, the book follows 16 people, 8 lightweights and 8 heavyweights (one of whom is Mike Teti) from 2006 through the beginning of 2009. The book consists of lots of behind-the-scenes photographs and lots of quotes. It’s not meant to be a glory book by any means. Instead it’s a book about the realities of training for the Olympics. This means looking at on the water training, VO2 max testing, erg testing, injuries, seatracing, making the boat, not making the boat, winning races, losing races, getting married, having children, earning money, etc. The full experience, through the eyes of 16 different people.

I know many people have been waiting patiently for a very long time for the book to come out. So I have decided that every other Monday, starting next week, I will be offering a sneak peak at the book. Basically a one or two page preview of the final book, which should be coming out in January 2010, barring any unforeseen circumstances.

In the meantime, I’m still taking title suggestions . . .

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