Monday, October 26, 2009

I'm going to be published!

I got an email today on my other blog about my time in Germany from a magazine that wants to publish one of my pictures in their magazine! I figured I might as well do it (after I make sure it's legit) and see if maybe they'll send me a copy of the final issue. Now I just wish I had photoshop so that I could put a watermark on my images in order to make sure credit is given. (If anyone has a copy they'd like to give me, I'm very open to that!)

Here is a copy of what was posted on my blog (it was initially addressed "Dear Melissa" though so that's a little disheartening...I assume my sister commented first or something so they thought she was me):

"I am writing to you from Emel magazine.

As seen on your blog, we would like to include the following image(s) in our December issue, and as such need high resolution image(s) from you at the earliest possible convenience:

Mosque in Schwetzingen.

If you have any information about the Mosque, that would be appreciated to. However the pictures will be more than enough.


Our designers would like JPEG image files wherever possible at a high resolution (300dpi, minimum 2-3mb). We will of course fully credit your organisation/photographer.


To let you know a little more about emel, we are a dynamic lifestyle magazine with a Muslim focus. The magazine covers travel, ethical issues, health, food, and much more. We are a media company based in London with a global reach with subscribers in over 60 countries, with distribution in the UK, US, Middle East and South East Asia. We have an estimated readership of over 150,000 readers, and an email database of over 74,000. We currently receive 250,000 hits per month to our website.
In the past we have interviewed high profile personalities, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, newsreader Jon Snow, Yusuf Islam (formerly known as Cat Stevens), Michael Mansfield QC, green economist Ann Pettifor, Muhammad Ali, Tony Benn, Benjamin Zephaniah, Rageh Omaar, and many others.
I look forward to hearing from you.

Best Wishes

Huda Chaudhry

Editorial Intern
Hchaudhry55@gmail.com
emel magazine
1 Canfield Place
London NW6 3BT
Tel: 020 7328 7300"

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Climbing in Arches...

...is not a sport for the shy. Granted we did climb the rock that is about a hundred feet from one of the most visited monuments in the parks.



The next morning, we tried (for the second time) to climb Ancient Arts in the Fisher Towers area but there
were already two groups on the route and four more waiting. We quickly deserted that plan for an easier and shorter climb, only rock-throwing-distance from Balanced Rock. "Bubo" is a climb that goes right up the cracks and deep chimney on the tower directly to the right of Balanced Rock. Therefore, we had quite the crowd watching us while we were getting ready. Especially with the arrival of a big tour bus moments before we started. By the time we got up there most everyone had gotten bored though and we were pretty hidden from view of the new arrivals. Even though Austin feels "goofy" when people watch him climb, I think it kind-of helps me climb more cleanly. Probably because I've always been afraid of looking stupid in front of people. Surprisingly enough, not one person complained about us defacing a national treasure!

Jackson and Yellowstone

For fall break, we (we being me, Austin, and my mom and dad) headed up to Jackson Hole, WY on the way to Yellowstone. My parents had never been up there, and since it's my favorite place on earth, I will never pass up an opportunity to go. This time, the weather didn't cooperate with our plans since it is effectively winter up there but we still got to see some pretty cool animals and all of the geysers even though we were afraid that the NPS wasn't even going to let us in due to our lack of snow tires/chains. But they did.

Jackson is basically just like Park City, so it's not very exciting for us since it feels more like a staycation than a getaway. But it is pretty and it was actually nice with the snow on the mountains and generally has better scenery than Park City, I think. We even went to the Cowboy Bar which Austin says is "the thing to do." Don't ask me where he gets his information, but it was interesting for sure. Basically, it's a bunch of tourists who go in there to take pictures of their friends drinking a beer on a saddle barstool. Then Austin and I won a game of pool even though I didn't get a single ball in a pocket!

The next morning we drove up through Grand Teton National Park which was a bit of a letdown because we couldn't see the tops of the mountains through the low clouds. The views were good of all of the elk h
unters out there though...what a sport. I didn't realize the idea was to shoot an animal as close to your car as physically possible in order to reduce the amount of time and energy spent walking to the animal and hauling it back.

When we got up to Yellowstone without any encounters with the park ranger, we visited the geyser basin and walked around for a while since of course we just missed the eruption of Old Faithful (by about 30 seconds). We saw all of the hot pots, pools, geysers, and every other type of hydrothermal activity going on there and then made it back to the benches to watch the big show! After all of that excitement, we had to get back to our cabin to do some "real campin.'" Even though this tent had wireless and satellite TV.

The next day we took the long drive. Since a couple of the roads in the park are closed for the rest of the season, the trip from West Yellowstone to North Yellowstone entails driving all the way around counterclockwise and then turning around to retrace your tracks. The one nice thing about this long drive is that at least there are things to look at outside the window. Although the bison become akin to cattle by the end of the day, we did get to see quite a few elk, three bald eagles, and a coyote hunting! Pretty exciting because I think I got a better picture than the guys with the tens of thousands of dollars worth of photography equipment!

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Autumn in the Mountains

A couple of weeks ago, we headed up the Spiro trail with the intention of making it to Shadow Lake (we came up a little bit shy) but the main reason was just to go outside while the weather was still nice and the leaves were still colorful. Lucky for us, we made it right before the first freeze which has effectively killed our short fall season. Spring and fall in Park City are unbelievably short, so we are basically forced to drop everything in order to get outside while the season is "in." When we didn't have to dive out of the way of bikers going about 40 mph down the trail, I was able to sneak in a few pictures.