Different Worlds: A Virtual Journey

by Santosh Kumar

There are no foreign lands. It is the traveller only who is foreign." -Robert Louis Stevenson "The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land." -G. K. Chesterton "For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilization, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints." -Robert Louis Stevenson I always get that excited feeling that here is another place I have yet to see, when I sit down and buckle up in an airline seat, or a bus or most recently, the Korean KTX Train. Somehow looking at pictures, and then reading the story that accompanies the pictures, always sends me into another world. The amazing thing is that when I am looking at the travel magazines, I am almost always travelling somewhere, and in a way, that is what is happening, I am travelling to a different place and maybe a different time, and reliving the journey and the experience, as I read and look at the photographs. This book is going to take you on many different journeys through many different places in the world. Through the photographs here, you can experience what someone else has experienced, and feel the marvel or the awe, or the feeling they felt, when they focused on this particular scene, and also chose the image to put into this volume. What makes a great image? I have been doing many reviews on an art review site lately, and what I realised is that, certain images have a part of the photographer's eye and soul in them. These are images that has inspired or moved the photographer, and the feeling or excitement is sometimes leaping out of the image, or flowing out to wrap around the viewer and entice them to feel and experience what the photographer saw. Words cannot adequately describe what an image can portray so vividly. I also feel as an artist, that we convey what we feel about what we perceive, and that feeling, is what the viewer responds to. Great images absorb the viewer and bring them into the scene. Certain images have this inspirational quality that makes one want to stop and ponder, in the same way that we stop and ponder, when confronted with something inspirational or something moving. It could be something as small and as delicate as a moss garden blown up with a macro, to show whole life shapes and living organisms, all existing within a miniscule world. It could be something as vast as an entire walled ancient city viewed from high up in a plane, or a whole mountain range. Different Worlds exist in the reflection in a drop of dew, or the entire rainbow over the sea, in the eye of a tiger or the gaze of a young child or animal. There are many different worlds and there are many different interpretations of what is different, from the painting by the traditional artist, to the digital creation of the graphic designer. Many who cannot travel, find their journeys through the images of other travellers. Even seasoned travellers sit and dream when confronted with an image of a location or world they may not have known even existed. The Ice castles and hotels of Sweden and Harbin, fascinate and attract, as much as the coral reefs of the Australia's Barrier Reef, or the sunken wrecks of New Zealand's Stewart Island. The scenic countryside of the Australian Outback, and the Backwoods of America, vie against the frozen Niagara Falls and the Opulence of Los Vegas and the fast Life. The sultry beauty of India, and the stark reality of The Great Wall of China, play against the azure waters of the Caribbean and the Greek islands, and the Castles of Europe and the temples of Asia hold much magic and mysticism, and take us to p

168 pages, Hardcover

First published April 5, 2006