Uncharted Brings You the Universe

Part of our goal at Uncharted is to provide, through our stories and photos, a burning desire in those who read and view what we produce to replicate those experiences in their own lives. Our update this weekend is a prime example of a story and photo package offering just that.

Take me, for instance. Long have I harbored the desire to be an astronomer. When I was eight years old, Carl Sagan's Cosmos debuted on television. Color me mesmerized. For weeks. I watched those shows. I borrowed every book from the library on astronomy. I even wrote a fan letter to Carl Sagan at Cornell University, and he wrote back, advising me to work hard on my math skills if I wanted to be an astronomer like him.

Alas, it was not to be. A straight line of Cs in algebra -- despite my efforts to learn it better than that -- dashed my hopes. My only consolation came through geometry, where I was able to understand the stuff enough to pull As. So I became a writer instead.

Then I read Joseph Burkhead's story on his adventure at Arizona's Kitt Peak Observatory, where he got to go to the top of that sacred mountain and actually have astronomers at his elbow -- both elbows -- unlocking the secrets of the cosmos. Suddenly, it all came back -- right to replaying that eerie Vangelis theme music in my head, from Sagan's television series.

So click here quickly and begin to read. And if you're a Cosmos fan like I am, hit Hulu.com and queue up one of the old shows. Listen to Vangelis' opening theme as you read Joseph's story. That cosmic desire will all come back to you.

I'm leaving now. Going outside to stare at the stars.

Uncharted Goes Underground

One of the things I enjoy the most about writing and taking photos for Uncharted is that I get to show off some of the wonderful places that make eastern Idaho such a fantastic place to explore. 17-Mile Cave is one of those places.

The cave is a mix of the ancient and modern. Ancient, because it's a remnant of Idaho's volcanic era, a time that saw volcanoes sprouting from the desert, great cracks opening in the Earth oozing lava and, of course, underwater rivers of lava forming caves and tubes under the upper crust, then draining, leaving a place for moderns like us to plow underground. And modern, because the cave is filled with graffiti, has a chamber large enough to host touch football games and is uncomplicated enough to allow amateur cave explorers a place to go without worrying about getting lost.

So, stop reading this and go on to read about 17-Mile Cave. Enjoy.

Finally: Proof that I work.

I don't have too many photos of myself working. That's what happens when you're most often behind the camera. But this one, taken by Uncharted Photo Assistant John Milligan, is definitely my favorite.

Covering the Holi Festival of Color last weekend at the Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork, Utah, was one of the more unusual assignments I've photographed and written about. Over 15,000 people packed the hillside just below the temple waiting to throw bags of powdered dust into the air and all over each other.

Most of the battle for good photojournalism is simply placing yourself in the right place and waiting for the right moment. Whenever I cover a story, I'm always looking to position myself in such a way as to ensure that I'm ready when the climax of the event goes down.

I positioned myself at what seemed to be the focal point, a pile of dry wood with a plastic witch-like figurine sitting on the top, ready to be burned. As it turns out, the figurine was an effigy of the demoness Holika, for whom the Holi Festival of Color derives its name. I figured everyone's attention would be on the fire, at least for the first few seconds. After that, you just need to run with what happens.

So when the bonfire was lit and people began throwing colored flour all over the place, you could barely see a thing. The plastic bags covering my cameras started falling off and for moments, here and there, it was hard to breathe. The fire was so hot that it started to burn even though I was almost 15 feet away. Before I knew it, I was sandwiched in the middle of thousands of people with barely any room to move, wishing I had a wider angle lens.

But there was something exhilarating about being in the middle of it all, even covered head to toe in colored powder. At Uncharted ,we try to promote a philosophy of "Explore. Live. Feel." That means when we cover a story, we immerse ourselves in it. We want to show you what it was like to be there. I hope I achieved that with this story. In any case, events like these make me excited to get out there and do more stories and photos for Uncharted.

Alan Murray is executive director of Uncharted. He likes sea horses and snowshoes, and frequently has the urge to leave the country. To contact Alan, feel free to write to alan@uncharted.net.

MacGyvering Uncharted

Sometimes I feel like MacGyver. In fact, working on Uncharted often reminds me of the 1980s television series featuring Richard Dean Anderson as Mac, the secret agent who uses commonplace items to maneuver through challenging situations - anything from disarming a missile with a paperclip, to using a coffin as a Jet Ski, to restraining one of the bad guys by stapling his coat to the ground.

Over the past few weeks I've been on the road frequently, giving presentations and recruiting for Uncharted's team. As we're an all-volunteer force with minimal resources, I often find myself telling potential candidates we put Uncharted together with a Swiss Army Knife, duct tape, and some kite string.

Case in point: we had a presentation at Brigham Young University-Idaho last month, our first of many, discussing geo-social media, a concept unique to Uncharted. As often happens, time was limited and we found ourselves piecing together the presentation at the last minute.

Consequently, I left for Idaho without presentation slides or even a rehearsal. I made it to campus about an hour before my appointment, found an internet signal, and downloaded the presentation sent by the team only a few moments earlier. I then spent the remaining time on the phone with our communications director, reviewing slides and memorizing.

Somehow, the presentation went well and I was able to meet with many qualified candidates. When you take into account that each member of our team has a full-time job and that Uncharted is all team-funded, it's quite incredible to see the high quality we manage to generate, and it's even more thrilling to see it grow. That's not to say we don't have shortcomings. The site is far from what we envision, but we do the very best, given the circumstances, to continue improving Uncharted, thereby giving our audience the best experience possible.

This is all doable because of an incredible group of individuals who make up our team. While they come from various backgrounds, including journalists and civil engineers, programmers and members of the armed services, as well as teachers and accountants, they all have a couple of things in common, certain qualities we search for as we interview potential candidates.

The first is ingenuity. Each member of our team possesses the unique ability to transform the group's collective time, expertise, and resources into low-cost, effective solutions. They do this with little funding and time.

The second is cross-training. Each member comes with a variety of skills or, at the very least, the desire to learn things not necessarily related to their main area of expertise. For instance, it's not uncommon for a member of our communications/marketing team to take on the task of writing a story or taking photos for our editorial department. And it's not out of the ordinary to see a staff writer shooting photos or a copy editor brainstorming public relations issues.

While meeting with candidates at BYU-Idaho, we were most impressed with how professors in the communications department both encourage and provide opportunities for their students to learn a variety of skills, anything from sales to video, to writing and photography, to marketing and more. That said, it probably won't surprise you we've already added some soon-to-be graduates from BYU-Idaho to our team. And even though our recruiting efforts span the globe, I'm sure they won't be the last.

As Uncharted continues to expand, we realize it is our team and our wonderful audience who deserve the real credit for its success. No doubt we'll continue keeping things together with duct tape and kite string for a bit longer, but when you look at the incredible people who contribute to Uncharted, there is little doubt it's course is firmly set towards success.

Alan Murray is executive director of Uncharted. He likes sea horses and snowshoes, and frequently has the urge to leave the country. To contact Alan, feel free to write to alan@uncharted.net.

Uncharted is Trademarked!

Its official! We just received a certificate from the United States Patent Trade Office showing that our registration of the Uncharted trademark is authorized and complete! If you're familiar with the TM registration process, you know it can be a long and laborious process, but you also probably know how important it is to protect your brand identity. We certainly do. Over a year ago we noticed someone online that started copying our ideas, almost word for word. The night we made this alarming discovery, I went to work immediately on registering the Uncharted trademark and didn't stop until I was done applying. By 3 a.m. the same night I was finally finished, and Uncharted was on its way to getting government authorization for its trademark. Now, over a year later, we can look back on all the work it took to get our trademark out there in commerce and approved by the legal reviewers with great satisfaction in knowing we own the Uncharted name from here on out in our industry. Another step forward in the adventure. Uncharted is here to stay.

Uncharted Brings You the Bahamas

Uncharted just keeps plugging along, and that pleases us to no end. Today, we updated the site with our second Explorer story (which you can read here), featuring the Bahamas -- our first international destination. We've got a very long way to go to get Uncharted out of the Intermountain West, but with Explorers like Lisa Wheat, we'll get there, one story at a time.

A Taste of the Uncharted Lifestyle

As we sat around the kitchen table, Alan eating the second half of his Big Juds burger, John crunching away at a cup of half-cooked ramen noodles, and me sitting there looking hung over even though I hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol, the discussion was this: How can we make all of our workdays like today?

This was our workday:

Up at 6, out the door by 6:45. Snowmobile suits, snow pants, parkas, gloves and hats help us to ward off the chilly weather, with temperatures hovering at a mere 6 above zero. Shortly after 7 am, we weaved through the snow-ridden streets of Ashton, Idaho, trying to find a place to park. Then we wander the streets with the sun rising in our faces as we talk to the owners of dogs set to compete in the American Dog Derby, featured on our home page today. Between the twin tasks of putting booties on his dogs’ feet and cleaning up their messes with a small rake and shovel, Bino Fowler of Sunriver, Oregon, told us why he loves sled dog racing. Up the street and around the corner are two dozen other contestants, likely with similar stories.

As the racers leave town one by one, we’re all pleasantly surprised by the easy, friendly manner of the Ashtonites we bump into. When we say hello, nobody turns the cold shoulder. They’re happy to be in this little town, awake so early in the cold. With a few sentences of explanation of who we are and what Uncharted is, we’re given the same insider tips these friendly folk give most everyone with a camera and a question. We follow it, along highways east of town and through banks of snow that force themselves into Alan’s shoes, making his socks soggy.

Nobody treats us as if we were interlopers. This is significant. Both Alan and I have worked for newspapers, and are used to bracing ourselves for the expected comments: You work for the paper, eh? Well, don’t screw it up. We might still screw it up, because newspapers do not corner the market on infallibility. But we’ll do our best. And have fun doing it.

So at the table, having lunch at about 2 pm, we ask ourselves: When will this become our full-time occupation? When will we be able to wake up in the morning and have Uncharted be our full-time, paying gig, not the part-time, volunteer gig it is now? We had fun. We want more of that. Someday soon, we hope. Someday soon.

Of course we’ve got a lot of work to do between now and then. We’ve got to get more agile. More mobile. More integrated with the folks we want to connect with. We’re working on it. And we expect great things to happen.