Prince of Whales by Kate Jenkins

Marie-Antoine Carême, the world's first celebrity chef and founder of the concept of haute cuisine, continues to inspire us today, some 180 years after his death. The King of Chefs, and the Chef of Kings, as he's often called, and his eccentric culinary creations are the inspiration of an art exhibition in Brighton, United Kingdom, titled The Illustrated Recipe.

The art show, hosted by Gallery 40 and Cameron Contemporary Art, features five British artists who are experts in six very different mediums of art: paint (Kirsty Wither), crochet (Kate Jenkins), collage (Ed Kluz), denim (Ian Berry), digital illustration (Sarah Arnett), and cake (Annabel de Vetten of Conjurer's Kitchen).

Below are some sample of the exhibited artwork:

King Prawn Vol-au-vent by Kate Jenkins

Swan Vol-au-vents by Kate Jenkins

Sequined Salmon by Kate Jenkins

Sequined boar's head with assorted vegetables by Kate Jenkins

Boars Head by Sarah Arnett

... and the delectable Boar's Head cake by Annabel de Vetten:

The Illustrated Recipe exhibit goes until May 27, 2013 - so check it out if you're in the area: Link - Thanks Kate Jenkins!

Sunset Spectrum

It's not easy to improve upon the gorgeous skies that Mother Nature paints herself, but photographer Matt Molloy managed to pull it off: the Canadian photographer stitched together a composite of hundreds of individual photographs to create stunningly beautiful effects in this "time stacks" photography series.

View more over at Matt's 500px webpage | Facebook page | Tumblr - via Bored Panda

Sky Feathers

Burning Cotton Candy Flying Through the Sky

Power Source

Sunset Explosion

Autumn(ated) Stack

Crocheting the Clouds

Land of the Giant Lollipops

Last, but not least, Matt has put together the time stacks in this neat YouTube clip:

After photographer Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze arrived in Hong Kong in 2009, he became fascinated by the character of the city's urban spaces, with gleaming, modern buildings standing side-by-side with traditional tong lau tenements. As he continued his exploration of the city, Romain realized that his fascination stemmed from the sense of awe that one feels when gazing up from the foot of skyscrapers.

In his photography series and art book Vertical Horizon, Romain captured the architectural majesty of gigantic skyscrapers from below. Check it out:

VERTICAL HORIZON

Vertical Horizon is a photographic journey between the buildings of a relentlessly growing city. It is a deep immersion into the city's thick atmospheres, and a visual record of clues in a search for the missing element that brings unity to its wildly diverse built environment. Both introverted and extroverted, Vertical Horizon is a contemplative dive into the raw nature of Hong Kong and an expression of its vertical elan.

Hardcover with 86 color illustrations, in English and Chinese. Text by Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze and Ashbi Ng

Available at Asia One | Amazon

About the Author

Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze is a French graphic artist with a Masters in multimedia and art from East Paris University. His interest in photography began during his period of working in Los Angeles and Tokyo, and subsequently blossomed into a passion after his arrival in Hong Kong. Stunned by its architectural race in the sky, he felt the need to use his camera to share his feelings about the city. The geometry of the urban environment and the vivid lives it shelters are the aspects of Hong Kong that inspire him most.

Authors and publishers: Want to feature your book on Neatorama for free? Email info AT neatorama DOT com for details on Neatorama's Book Excerpt feature.

These mysterious hooded creatures are the Guardians of Time, a sculpture by Austrian artist Manfred Kielnhofer. The illuminated Guardians appear every night at a new place - currently, they are located in Dubai for Art Dubai Week 2013. The life-size sculptures look great during the day, but at night ... that's when they're truly stunning.

View more over at Manfred's website: Link - Thanks Manfred!

Take a look at our favorites from past installations of the Guardians of Time:

View more over at Manfred's website: Link - Thanks Manfred!

If this looks like an entrance to a world completely alien to most of us, that's because it is. These tunnels lead to Manhattan.

Photographer Patrick Cashin snapped these amazing photos of the East Side Access project for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, showing the progress of the underground tunneling project that will allow the Long Island Rail Road to access Grand Central Terminal. Clearly, these magnificent photos show that tunneling projects are never boring: Link - via jwz

We've all been guilty of dog-earing a book to mark the page, but Ann Arbor-based artist Math Monahan has elevated folding pages from a book into an art form. He wrote:

Using a system of braided books, I am attempting to create a structure that possesses its power and agency only when it exist between academic book and art object. By allowing the tension of the circle arrangement to hold the object together, without adhesives or restraint, the pages slowly unbraid themselves over time giving the installation the opportunity to become books, again, in their original form.

Math's artwork are located in two installations: in the Penny Stamps Graduate Studio and in the Hatcher Graduate library in the University of Michigan.

Visual News has photos and interview with the artist:

VN: How long did it take you to create your Between series? Can you explain the process?
MM: The installation involves 2 book circles. One to be installed in a library, the other in a gallery or other art defined space (i.e. studio). Each book circle has twelve books. To braid the books, I first find the center of the book. From there I carefully fold in the first page from the right, making sure to not crease or tear the page. Then I fold the same from the left. I continue the folding back and forth adding another page to the fold each time until the book is finished.

VN: How long does it take for the books to unbraid themselves?

MM: When arranging the braided books in a circle I use a string to hold the form together. When the form is finished I remove the string releasing the tension and allowing the braided pages to begin unraveling themselves. Some unbraid themselves more then others. Eventually the circles settle somewhere in between. In this installation the books in the library unbraided more then the books in the studio. I like to believe the books in the library were trying to be closer to the books surrounding them.

More at Visual News and Math's website and Tumblr.

Chiwa - Mchinji, Malawi

All kids love toys, but how kids from around the world play with them show striking cultural differences and some comforting similarities. In his Toy Stories photo series, Italian photographer Gabriele Galimberti spent 18 months photographing children from around the world and their most prized toy possessions. He said:

"The richest children were more possessive. At the beginning, they wouldn't want me to touch their toys, and I would need more time before they would let me play with them ... In poor countries, it was much easier. Even if they only had two or three toys, they didn't really care. In Africa, the kids would mostly play with their friends outside."

Ben Machell of The Times Magazine wrote:

Yet even children worlds apart share similarities when it comes to the function their toys serve. Galimberti talks about meeting a six-year-old boy in Texas and a four-year-old girl in Malawi who both maintained their plastic dinosaurs would protect them from the dangers they believed waited for them at night – from kidnappers and poisonous animals respectively. More common was how the toys reflected the world each child was born into: so the girl from an affluent Mumbai family loves Monopoly, because she likes the idea of building houses and hotels, while the boy from rural Mexico loves trucks, because he sees them rumbling through his village to the nearby sugar plantation every day.

Visit Galimberti's website for more marvelous Toy Stories photos: Link - via Feature Shoot, Thanks özi!

Some of our favorite photos:

Tangawizi - Keekorok, Kenya

Watcharapom - Bangkok, Thailand

Virginia - American Fork, Utah

Tyra - Stockholm, Sweden

Arafa & Aisha - Bububu, Zanzibar

View many more at Galimberti's official website: Link

We've featured a lot of neat photography on Neatorama, but looking back in the archives, these images are usually of artwork, animals, and landscapes. But who says that great photography has to be just that? Why not great photography of engineering in action?

That's exactly what Engineering News-Record just did with their 2012 The Year in Construction Photo Contest. The magazine has picked the best engineering-focused photos from both professional and amateur photographers. Take a look at their gallery: Link

Here are some of our favorites:

Auxiliary Water Supply System Upgrade, San Francisco, USA (Photo: Robin Scheswoh)

Photographer Robin Scheswoh works for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. She took the photo above of a cistern in San Francisco in 1910, following the 1906 earthquake as part of the water source for the local fire department.

Water Line Replacement, Everett, Washington, USA (Photo: Will Austin)

It looks like a shot from the title sequence of James Bond, but the photo above is taken by freelance photographer Will Austin who was on assignment to cover a water pipeline replacement project. He stumbled on this shot of a welder deep inside a 48-inch diameter pipe. The shine on the wall is from the glare of the arc welder reflecting off the glossy epoxy lining of the pipe.

Pontiac Plant demolition, Pontiac, Michigan, USA (Photo: Stephen SetteDucati)

Amateur photographer Stephen Ducati knew that he could get a "potentially fantastic" photo as he climbed onto the ledge of a building overlooking the demolition yards of an old Pontiac assembly plant in Michigan. He was right. It is indeed, fantastic.

San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge, California, USA (Photo: Martin Chandrawinata)

Nobody told you in engineering school that mountain climbing would be part of your job! Hanna Group construction engineer Chandrawinata took this early (and very foggy) morning photo of the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge as workers prepared for the installation of the suspension bridge's eastern span main cable.

Gdansk Tunnel, Gdansk, Poland (Photo: Marcin Bencer)

Local freelance photographer Marcin Bencer snapped this photo of the golden gleaming Gdansk's 42,000-seat PGE stadium in the background of a muddy, piled foundation ramp of a tunnel construction site.

Music City Center, Nashville, Tennessee, USA (Photo: Bruce Cain/Elevated Lens Photography)

Photographer Bruce Cain mounted his camera on top of a 65-foot telescoping mast on his truck and snapped 24 photos of the 1.2 million sq-ft Music City Convention Center at dusk. He then stitched and blended the photos together, so he was able to "show the detail inside the building without making the sky too bright." ENR noted that in the middle of the photograph sat Amquip's 300-ton Liebherr crawler crane, the first crane at Ground Zero on Sept 13, 2001.

Pecorone Viaduct, Lauria, Italy (Photo: Emilio Filippelli/Regina Lopez Tudanca, Sacyr Vallehermoso S.A.)

Boom, goes the viaduct! Emilio Filippelli wanted to be as close as he could possible get in order to capture the power and technical control of the explosives being used to bring down the eroding Lauria Junction viaduct in Italy. We'd say he got pretty darned close.

View more over at ENR: Gallery | Full Story - Thanks Jordy!

Jewel of the Universe is the name of this world map made of glass and gemstones, lit by 6912 LEDs. Artist Chris Chamberlain spent 27 months putting it together.

Jewel of the Universe contains a third of a million pieces of cut glass, but it's not the kind of stained glass with pieces connected by metal strips -it's a mosaic.

Chamberlain used 260 karats of precious gems to mark large cities and turquoise for lakes and rivers. You can find a list of the gems used here.  

The finished piece is over ten feet long and over six feet tall. Oh yeah, the whole thing is for sale!

See more pictures at the project's website. Link  -via Visual News

Photographer and visual artist Jim Kazanjian Photoshopped thousands of photos he found on the web to create black-and-white "photographs" of surreal houses, structures, and landscapes. Michael Zhang of PetaPixel wrote:

Each piece is what Kazanjian calls a “hyper-collage.” The artist creates them using a large collection of photographs found on the Internet — a collection that currently contains nearly 30,000 images.

Kazanjian then takes tiny bits and pieces from these photographs and, using Photoshop, blends them into photo-manipulations that don’t really have anything to do with the original photographs. A proper camera is nowhere to be found throughout the entire creation process.

Some of the “photos” are actually the result of combining more than 50 separate photographs into a single bizarre scene.

View more at Kazanjian's official website: Link

Most hotels have bars, but you're probably not thinking of these ones on the window. The Hotel Het Arresthuis in the Netherlands was actually a jail that was converted into a luxury hotel.

Now this is one jailhouse we don't mind checking into! Take a look:

The bars on the window scream "it's a jail," but the welcoming door hints that this is no ordinary building.

Most hotels have bars, but the Hotel Het Arresthuis has both the come-in-and-drink bar and you-can't-get-out bars on the windows.

The inmates are hungry!

Notice the chef wore old timey jailhouse apron and hat. The waiter is probably whispering that he's got a shank inside the wine bottle.

Who says incarceration can't be fun? Here's a dinner party at the hotel, complete with jailhouse attire.

Yard time has a very different meaning in this prison-turned-hotel

The toilets. You'll go number two ... for a long time!

Get inside your comfy cell, er, hotel room

The hotel has four suites, this one is The Director:

... The Jailer:

... The Laywer:

... and The Judge:

Link: Hotel Het Arresthuis Official Website

Your mom probably told you that eating carrots would improve your vision. That turned out to be a clever lie instigated by the British during World War II to cover up their new radar system that helped Royal Air Force's pilots in spotting enemy planes. The British intelligence spread a rumor that pilots were fed carrots to help improve their vision - and the public bought it!

To poke fun at this carrot myth, photographer Henry Hargreaves and food stylist Nicole Heffron collaborated to create this fun little project: the Carrot Eye Chart.

Thanks Henry!

We've featured the gorgeous Moleskine illustrations of Mattias Adolfsson before on Neatorama, but the Swedish artist has got some new ones and we can't resist! Man, they are gorgeous.

Feast your eyes, Neatoramanauts:

View many more over at Mattias' Behance site and official blog

See the thing made out of LEGO? Look closely. Photographer Dean West and LEGO master sculptor Nathan Sawaya collaborated to create the art series In Pieces, where structures made from LEGO pieces are hidden somewhere in each image. The photographs themselves are gorgeous, but additional twist of the hidden LEGO definitely added to their surrealistic nature. In the age of Photoshop, West and Sawaya's artwork bring up the question of just how much of the photograph is real and how much is manipulated.

See if you can find the hidden LEGO (with answers below).

The answer to those four above:

See 3 more beautiful In Pieces photos at Dean West's official website [it's a gorgeous site, but it requires Flash], Behance, Facebook and Twitter - via The Fox is Black

Neatorama is proud to bring you an excerpt and photographs from Escape Velocity, an article on emperor penguins from the November edition of National Geographic magazine, with an exclusive video and interactive graphic that show penguins rocketing out of the water onto the ice. The gorgeous photographs accompanying the article are from award-winning wildlife photographer Paul Nicken.

Preparing to launch from the sea to the sea ice, an emperor penguin reaches maximum speed. (Image credit: © Paul Nicklen/National Geographic)

An excerpt from Escape Velocity:

When an emperor penguin swims through the water, it is slowed by the friction between its body and the water, keeping its maximum speed somewhere between four and nine feet a second. But in short bursts the penguin can double or even triple its speed by releasing air from its feathers in the form of tiny bubbles. These reduce the density and viscosity of the water around the penguin’s body, cutting drag and enabling the bird to reach speeds that would otherwise be impossible. (As an added benefit, the extra speed helps the penguins avoid predators such as leopard seals.)

An airborne penguin shows why it has a need for speed: To get out of the water, it may have to clear several feet of ice. A fast exit also helps it elude leopard seals, which often lurk at the ice edge. (Image credit: © Paul Nicklen/National Geographic)


Life is safer at the colony, where predators are few and company is close. (Image credit: © Paul Nicklen/National Geographic)


The danger of ambush by leopard seals is greatest when entering the water, so penguins sometimes linger at the edge of an ice hole for hours, waiting for one bold bird to plunge in. (Image credit: © Paul Nicklen/National Geographic)


“These penguins have probably never seen a human in the water,” says photographer Paul Nicklen, “but it took them only seconds to realize that I posed no danger. They relaxed and allowed me to share their hole in the sea ice.” (Image credit: © Paul Nicklen/National Geographic)

(Image credit: National Geographic)

See the entire article, more photographs, an interactive graphic, and a video, too, at National Geographic magazine. Paul Nicklen will be releasing an app with additional photos titled Paul Nicklen: Pole to Pole on Oct. 25.

I love to work with food in photography, to me there is so much potential in the genre for storytelling by mashing up opposite components and forcing the viewer to look at things differently. With this series I guess there is a comment about consumption and the similarities with the way we are obsessed with the 'new' gadget. We get it, are obsessed by it and then discard it. Just like fast food! But at the end of the day, I hope people just get a kick out of seeing some fun pictures!

The two-month expedition seeks to repeat the historic climb of the 1963 National Geographic-sponsored American Mount Everest Expedition, almost 50 years after that first American ascent. Mountaineer Conrad Anker and photographer Cory Richards will attempt the risky West Ridge route. At the same time a second team with additional climbers from The North Face and National Geographic writer Mark Jenkins will take on the mountain’s Southeast Ridge.

Saying Goodbye at Everest Base Camp

(YouTube link)

Follow the expedition in the "On Everest" Field Test section of the May edition of National Geographic magazine for iPad.

Image credit: National Geographic.

COPYRIGHT© 2012 RMS TITANIC, INC; Produced by AIVL, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.
With her rudder cleaving the sand and two propeller blades peeking from the murk, Titanic’s mangled stern rests on the abyssal plain, 1,970 feet south of the more photographed bow. This optical mosaic combines 300 high-resolution images taken on a 2010 expedition. From the April 2012 issue of National Geographic.

The wreck sleeps in darkness, a puzzlement of corroded steel strewn across a thousand acres of the North Atlantic seabed. Fungi feed on it. Weird colorless life-forms, unfazed by the crushing pressure, prowl its jagged ramparts. From time to time, beginning with the discovery of the wreck in 1985 by Explorer-in-Residence Robert Ballard and Jean-Louis Michel, a robot or a manned submersible has swept over Titanic’s gloomy facets, pinged a sonar beam in its direction, taken some images—and left.

In recent years explorers like James Cameron and Paul-Henry Nargeolet have brought back increasingly vivid pictures of the wreck. Yet we’ve mainly glimpsed the site as though through a keyhole, our view limited by the dreck suspended in the water and the ambit of a submersible’s lights. Never have we been able to grasp the relationships between all the disparate pieces of wreckage. Never have we taken the full measure of what’s down there.

Until now. In a tricked-out trailer on a back lot of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), William Lange stands over a blown-up sonar survey map of the Titanic site—a meticulously stitched-together mosaic that has taken months to construct. At first look the ghostly image resembles the surface of the moon, with innumerable striations in the seabed, as well as craters caused by boulders dropped over millennia from melting icebergs.

On closer inspection, though, the site appears to be littered with man-made detritus—a Jackson Pollock-like scattering of lines and spheres, scraps and shards. Lange turns to his computer and points to a portion of the map that has been brought to life by layering optical data onto the sonar image. He zooms in, and in, and in again. Now we can see the Titanic’s bow in gritty clarity, a gaping black hole where its forward funnel once sprouted, an ejected hatch cover resting in the mud a few hundred feet to the north. The image is rich in detail: In one frame we can even make out a white crab clawing at a railing.

Here, in the sweep of a computer mouse, is the entire wreck of the Titanic—every bollard, every davit, every boiler. What was once a largely indecipherable mess has become a high-resolution crash scene photograph, with clear patterns emerging from the murk. “Now we know where everything is,” Lange says. “After a hundred years, the lights are finally on.”

(YouTube link)

In zoos, in private collections, and in the field with biologists around the world, I’m trying to photograph as many species as I can by using a portable studio with black and white backgrounds. I’ve been at this quite a while now and have captured nearly 1,800 in the past five years. That’s not nearly enough, but it’s a start.

 A giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla) at the Sunset Zoo. (Image credit: Joel Sartore/National Geographic)

West Usambara two-horned chameleon (Kinyongia multituberculata) at the Houston Zoo. (Image credit: Joel Sartore/National Geographic)

Damaraland mole rat at the Houston Zoo. This species is one of only two eusocial mammals, with members of colonies all serving specific roles, much like bees. (Image credit: Joel Sartore/National Geographic)

Hawk-headed or red-fan parrot (Deroptyus accipitrinus) at the Houston Zoo. This unusual Amazon basin parrot has a crown of brightly-colored head feathers it raises when it threatened or aggressive. (Image credit: Joel Sartore/National Geographic)

Coquerel's sifaka (Propithecus coquereli) at the Houston Zoo. (Image credit: Joel Sartore/National Geographic)

Red Bird-of-paradise (Paradisaea rubra) at the Houston Zoo. (Image credit: Joel Sartore/National Geographic)

(video link)

The night before Atlantis flies for the very last time, putting an end to the Space Shuttle program. Photographer: Sean Tamblyn

Journey into the mouth of Africa’s most active volcano, Nyiragongo, and stand on the shore of the world’s largest lava lake.  Join an expedition with a National Geographic Magazine photographer and an international team of scientists as they reach the volcano’s summit — a near-vertical 11,385 feet — and then rappel directly into its mouth — 1,300 feet — nearly the height of the Empire State Building.  With little doubt it will erupt again, the team hopes to take stunning images and gather geological samples to unlock the secrets of one of most dangerous and least studied volcanoes in the world.

(video link)

Geologists and photographers meet to plan their journey to the summit of a very active volcano.

Spatter Cone

(video link)

Photographer Carsten Peter risks life and limb to get a shot from inside the spatter cone.

Man vs. Volcano airs on National Geographic Channel on Thursday, April 4 at 10PM ET/PT as part of the signature event, Expedition Week, preceded by Into the Iceland Volcano on the same night at 9PM ET/PT. National Geographic Magazine photographer Carsten Peter’s story and photos are also featured in the April 2011 issue of National Geographic Magazine (“The Volcano Next Door”), on newsstands now.

Thoughts are biased. When ideas are passed from one person to another, due to the transfiguration of the communication process and the frame of mind of the receiver, they are always perceived with bias.

Inspired by the famous 2D drawing of the optical illusive bookshelf, a 3D structure is translated and the “Bias of Thought” bookshelf is formed. It can be used for shelving books and iPads as well as hanging magazines. Visually, the optical illusion serves as a reminder that, whenever one picks up a medium, ideas can be misinterpreted when passed from one end to the other.

(YouTube link)

In 2009, a team of British cavers investigated a recently uncovered cave in a remote Vietnamese jungle. The Son Doong cave is enormous; can it be larger than the current world-record holder? The explorers traveled for miles through the cave before hitting a 46-foot-high wall. Now, follow the team as they return to Son Doong to finish exploring the cave and climb the wall. Will Son Doong prove to be the worlds biggest cave? And what secrets are undiscovered inside this unique ecosystem?

Like a castle on a knoll, a rock formation shines beneath a skylight in Hang Son Doong. A storm had just filled the pool, signaling that exploring season was coming to an end.(Photo Credit: © Carsten Peter/National Geographic)

Racop says that his occupation is more than just a job, it’s a mission. “I’ve been studying this car since I was two-years-old.  I have over 5,000 photos, all 120 episodes on tape, and lots of video of the Barris cars in my archives.  Yeah, you could say that I’m a little obsessed!” Racop says, laughing.

“Most of our customers are in their late 40's or 50's,” Racop said.  “The kids are out of the house, they have come into some money, and it’s time to do something fun. They either like the 1966 Batman, or just loved the 1966 Batmobile.  Either way, every guy between the ages of 40 to 60would love to have this car.  This was their childhood dream car, just as it was for me. Some want a Batmobile to show off while picking up their kids from school.  Others use them for charity events.  Some have private collections, and others drive it nearly every day.”

“I say this with all humility: we’ve been very blessed with a very talented crew, and to receive this license from DC Comics is an absolute honor.”

Links: Official Nat Geo AMAZING! Website | Amazon | National Geographic Shop

Lovers of the weird and the wonderful - isn't that all of you Neatoramanauts? - rejoice: not only did Neatorama get a glimpse of the book and TV series, we've also got 4 copies of the book to give away (more on that later). First, here are some of the neat things you'll find in Nat Geo AMAZING!

Unbalanced

"That's the balance between life and death, and that is where life is"
                                                              - Eskil Ronningsbakken

Most of us seek balance in our lives, but few of us have turned it into an art form. Eskil Ronningsbakken is the exception, perfecting it even over troubled waters ... on a tight-rope thousands of feet in the air. Sometimes he is on a bicycle, sometimes he is on his feet; often times he is upside down. Occasionally he glides above solid ground, dangling from a hot air balloon.

"Other people might see this as stupid, but to me it's about being free and able to do what I want in my life," says the Norwegian, who has been performing for the past decade. Ronningsbakken is taking that message to the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, and the young Africans who live there. By teaching them acrobatics, he hopes to inspire lifelong confidence. "As a professional balancer," he explains, "you've got to be able to overcome fear. You've got to be at total peace with yourself."

Taking A Spin

It's every armchair traveler's fantasy: a changing landscape without
having to leave the comforts of one's home. Architect David Fisher has
designed a 200-apartment building in Dubai where each of the 80 floors
rotates individually, taking in the views of the city in a one-hour orbit.

The building is luxurious - a drive-in elevator allows owners of the
apartments, which range in price from $3 million to $30 million, to park
outside their doors - but it's also smart: Fisher's Dynamic Tower, as
it is called, is the first 100 percent self-powered green building with
the ability to generate electricity using horizontal wind turbines and
solar panels. Those who wish to live here but suffer from motion sickness
need not despair: A voice-activated control allows owners to instruct
the floors when to take a spin.

Learn To Think Like A Kung Fu Master

"War and peace" takes on a whole new meaning when it comes
to the 1,500-year-old martial art of Shaolin kung fu. But what seems like
a mass of contradictions to a Western mind - except, perhaps to fans of
David Carradine in Kung Fu - is perfectly sensible to the monks
who practice the discipline.

To wit: Practice meditation to keep your mind quiet at all times, even
when breaking an iron bar over your head or using your hand to cut through
a two-by-four like a chain saw.

Still deeper: Accept that only through understanding violence can you
avoid it. If violence cannot be avoided, parry only with the force initiated
by the attacker, in essence taking the intent of harm and "returning
it to sender." Even if it's a battle to the death, you are merely
avoiding another's attempt to inflict pain on you.

Needless to say, nailing these simple truths means that situations that
cause stress to the less enlightened become nonissue for the monks. Take
stage fright. The monks pictured here tour the world performing their
combination of acrobatics and fighting skills for audiences. Photographer
Philipp Horak, who tagged along to document them, said they keep their
cool at all times. "You'd think they would have to prep and concentrate
before a show," says Horak, "But they go to a Chinese restaurant
at 6 p.m., eat so much they feel bad, and then perform."

Shooting The Curl

Ask surfer and photographer Scott Aichner about the allure of riding
the waves, and he sounds like a man in love: "You feel at peace with
the Earth, and everything is just perfect," he says.

Capturing other people riding the barrel, on the other hand - as he did
here with fellow surfer Angelo Lozano in Mexico - is not a mellow experience.
Aichner dons a pair of snorkeling fins and then waits - treading water,
holding his camera, and hoping for the perfect shot. Being in the right
place at the right time - a surfer can ride the barrel for an average
of only four seconds - can mean Aichner may stay in the ocean for up to
three hours at a time (he trains for these marathon swims by running).
The photographer, who has surfed since he was ten years old, says understanding
the ocean and the conditions is crucial, since catching the perfect ride
(and the perfect picture) depends on all of the elements coming together.

As an artist, Aichner admits he must make personal sacrifices: There
are plenty of days he wishes he were the one on the surfboard, rather
than bobbing on the surface watching others side the waves. "Surfing
is my first love, and photography is my second. But I'm a better photographer
than I am a surfer." Still, he jumps at any chance he can to ride
the barrel himself, a thrill he admits can be daunting. "It's a controlled
fear," he says. "Riding the currents is like merging on to the
freeway when there's a semi in front of you and another one behind you.
You just get in the flow of things and know everything will work out.
Or, you prepare for controlled destruction."

Depth Defying

Forget those special glasses with the red and blue lenses - all German
artist Edgar Mueller needs to create a 3-D image is a slab of cement and
some chalk.

Mueller, who began practicing street art when he was 16, is in a whole
different league from those who take to the sidewalk with a piece of chalk.
Creating his art for festivals around the world, Mueller works with as
many as five assistants and for as long as five days to complete his images.
Perspective is everything, both for the artist and the viewers: Stand
in the wrong place, and you'll see only streaks of paint. But look from
the correct vantage point, and the street will suddenly seem to rise and
fall with the images of glaciers, caves, waterfalls, even the apocalypse.
"Close one eye when you look," counsels Mueller, "and it's
even better."

Bee-rded

From the Archives, circa 1920, Vincennes, Indiana

This looks like one hairy situation. A bee-keeper in Vincennes, Indiana,
circa 1920, let a swarm of the insects cover his face to demonstrate the
peaceful nature of honeybees.

Honeybees, 1 of approximately 20,000 known species of the insect, rarely
sting when they are away from their hive. Come too close to their home
base, and you risk a swarm: The pheromones released by one bee's sting
alert the others to arm themselves for battle. But keepers breed for docility,
and stings are infrequent for those who handle their charges with care.

Honeybees, which pollinate about one-third of the food Americans eat
- from fruit and vegetables to grains - are on the wane. The White House
has 60,000 honey-making bees, but there are only about 1,000 mass honey-producing
beekeepers in the United States. Enthusiasts say if amateurs kept even
one hive, that would help keep the world buzzing.

Burn and Crash

Greg Carpenter was ten years old when he set his first car on fire. So
perhaps it was inevitable that he would grow up to become Dr. Danger,
a stuntman and thrill seeker. "I do the flaming car thing real, real
good," says Carpenter, also a songwriter.

For this particular act, he ignites a car with 20 to 30 gallons of gas
and drives it into a pile of junk cars, exiting at precisely the right
moment. But the day this photograph was published, Carpenter performed
the same trick with a different result: The car crashed and the seat belt
pulverized his intestines. He was given a 5 percent chance of survival,
but 21 days later, he was back at work.

"As a child, I used to wonder what I would do in a battle. Would
I have hidden, or gone behind enemy lines?" he says. "I think
I've figured out I would have gone behind enemy lines."

Funeral Procession

This somber shot was caught by photographer Monica Szczupider when she
was volunteering at Cameroon's Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center, which
saves chimps orphaned by the bush meat trade. "Because the chimps
saw us taking away Dorothy [pictured here], we decided to let them watch
as we buried her, so they would perhaps understand she would not be returning,"
says Szczupider. "Almost all of them have watched their mothers die,
so it was the least we could do for them."

Szczupider says that none of the human witnesses were surprised by the
fact of the animals' grief, but says, "I was shocked by the manner
in which they grieved. Many of them were so quiet. Chimps are so vocal,
and easily distracted. To see them so focused on Dorothy, silently, was
humbling. It was their grieving process, and it was an honor to be a part
of it."

For humans, the grieving process is so painful that simply the act of
watching other people go through it elicits our empathy. No wonder, then,
that our witnessing this rare sight in the animal kingdom can't help but
make us anthropomorphize.

Picky, Picky

Freezing temperatures, insane heights, the threat of death ... what's
not to love? An ice-climbing junkie, Cameron Lawson took this photograph
of climbing buddy Tim Wagner dangling from Utah's Upper Bridal Veil Falls.
Though he swears that for the experienced it's not as scary as it looks,
even Lawson took a fall last year after 20 years of practicing.

"Climbers fall all the time, but with ice climbing, you have spikes
on your boots, axes in your hand, and sharp things around your waist,
plus the last ice screw that secures you is 20 feet below you, which means
you're actually falling 40 feet," he says. Needless to say, "Your
relationship with your climbing buddies are really intense, because your
life actually depends on them." Tennis, anyone?

Chasing Oz

It looks like this man is running the wrong way. But for a select few,
the eye of the storm is exactly where they want to be.

Engineer Tim Samaras, photographed here by Carsten Peter, is a tornado
chaser. Samaras spends months each year searching for the perfect tornado,
a meteorological phenomenon still only partially understood by scientists.
Driving a van outfitted with six probes designed to measure a tornado's
wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, humidity, and temperature,
Samaras hopes to plant his teammates - Peter, Pat Porter, and the rest
of a team from National Geographic - in the path of the funnel. For his
part, Peter wants to be the first photographer to film the inside of a
tornado.

Approximately 1,000 of these destructive rotating columns of air tear
through the United States every year, more than any other country in the
world. Strong tornadoes can create winds that blow up to 205 miles an
hour, their damage paths extending as far as 1 mile wide and 50 miles
long. About 40 percent of these are those that touch down in the central
Plains states from March through July, when cool, dry air from the Rocky
Mountains mingles with warm, damp undercurrents from the Gulf of Mexico.

Samaras and Peter aren't alone in their tornado obsession. A thriving
tourist industry devoted to eyewitnessing the storms has grown up in "Tornado
Alley," a belt that runs between South Dakota and Texas. Those who
want to thrill at the howling winds can book a vacation with companies,
such as Storm Chasing Adventure Tours, that bring gawkers to places where
the extreme storms are most frequent. Says Stephen Hondanish, a lightning
specialist with the National Weather Service whom the team met during
their expedition, "Everyone can read weather maps now. The information
is shared. We don't hide it. So we all know where to go." But as
Anton Seimon, a geographer and storm chaser who traveled with the National
Geographic team, says, "The tornado has become the black hole of
meteorology. We really don't know how it works."

For Samaras's team, chasing tornadoes has become their own fraught wild-goose
chase, with two seasons spent enduring bad weather that was not quite
bad enough to qualify for their purposes, prompting Samaras to say, "We
should hire ourselves out as storm-prevention people. Everywhere we go,
the storms fizzle out." Then, the third spring season, they are finally
in the right place at the right time - in this case, Manchester, South
Dakota, where a half-mile-wide twister set down on the town of just six
people, raising roofs, rearranging walls, displacing sheds, but luckily
killing no one. One couple sought refuge in their bathtub; a neighbor
was pulled by the winds right through the wall of his trailer home. Resident
Rex Geyer lost his two-story farmhouse in a flash. "There was nothing
left, no trees, no house, no nothing, "he says. "Just the foundation
picked clean."

For Carsten Peter, the moment he had waited for was as dramatic as he
had hoped, but equally unsettling. "It's an eerie situation,"
he says. "First, this beautiful, perfect structure comes towards
you and then there's this smooth, rushing noise, and then everything is
eaten up - everything. Power poles are sucked up out of the ground, all
the steel wires are ripped off the metal fences, and the fences are blown
down flat, leaving nothing but a pristine meadow. It's really crazy."

The Incredible Story of the Bond-Like Submersible Car

James Bond seems to have it all: adventure, sophistication .. and in
The Spy Who Loved Me, even a car turned submarine. Inspired by
that Lotus Esprit, the Swiss company Rinspeed has designed the SQuba,
built at a cost of $1.5 million and holding the record for being the first
fully submersible car. After the driver dons breathing gear and heads
for the deep, this sporty-looking open-topped automobile floats until
a door is opened to allow water in to help it sink. On land, the car goes
about 77 mph, while it slows to about 3 mph on the surface. Once submerged,
the car-boat, which battery powered so it has no emissions, can be driven
to a depth of 33 feet at about 1.8 mph, rendering the choice of "sink
or swim" irrelevant.

Bonus: Boxing with Cobras

From the Nat Geo AMAZING! TV Series, here's a village in Thailand where
the inhabitants not only live side-by-side with king cobras, they also
fight
them in the ring!

The
Book: Nat Geo AMAZING!

Nat
Geo Amazing!
is National Geographic as you've never seen it before - a celebration
of the world's 100 most fascinating people, places, and things, showcased
in a large-format, full-color paperback. Nat Geo AMAZING! has no trouble
grabbing your attention and never letting go. This 192-page collection
of the world's most fascinating information is the must-have companion
to the new National Geographic Channel series launched in July 2010.

Available at: Amazon
| National
Geographic Shop

About the Author

Melina Gerosa Bellows is the executive vice president of Children’s
Publishing at National Geographic. She oversees the Children’s Book
Division and serves as editor in chief of National Geographic Kids, the
largest children’s magazine in America with a circulation of 1.2
million. The magazine has nearly 20 international editions.

Bellows’ first National Geographic book, “Nat Geo AMAZING!
100 People, Places, and Things That Will Wow You” is the companion
book to “Nat Geo AMAZING!”, a 10-part television series that
will debut on the National Geographic Channel in July 2010.

Win a Free Copy of the Nat Geo AMAZING! Book

Our friends at the National Geographic are kind enough to provide us
with 4 Nat Geo AMAZING! Book. Instruction: To enter,
visit the Nat
Geo AMAZING! website, watch some amazing video clips (all
episodes guide) and then tell us in the comment below your favorite
video clip/image/story and why. Four best comments win. One entry per
person, please! Good luck!