In our global, high-tech world of today information about Bulgaria and its sights is to be found just about everywhere. It is enough to Google the name of a given place and dozens of publications and photographs will come up, some of them high-quality, others not so much. Nowadays, no one will leave for a distant destination without consulting the Internet, our know-it-all advisor on all matters. But it is the photographs that speak louder than the texts or descriptions. But photographs can also be misleading, so panoramic photography is now coming into its own.

Google street view is one of the ways to soak in the atmosphere of a place that might be thousands of kilometers away without budging from your armchair. But Google’s virtual tours are not as detailed or as beautiful as one might hope for. It is this void that is filled by Georgi Atanassov’s 360—degree panoramic photography. For years the Bulgarian photographer has been traveling around the country and taking pictures of its landmarks, to offer them to us on our computers in the minutest of details. You can take a look at the historical Tsarevets hill in Veliko Turnovo, for example, zoom in to take a closer look at some of the details and then take off wherever you choose to – i.e. 360 degrees. All the more so, that the photographer has endeavoured to show the things he takes pictures of in the best possible light. You may have heard of the ethnographic village Shiroka Luka and seen photographs of it. But it is quite another thing to find yourself there, albeit virtually, in its narrow streets and to take a walk past its ancient stone houses with the craggy ridges of the Rhodope mountain in the background. Georgi Atanassov says he uses a digital reflex camera with a “fish eye” lens. Of, course technology is not everything. Ultimately, it all depends on the photographer and his unorthodox view of the surrounding world. In this case the effect is astounding. And the best thing is that these detailed photographs of some of Bulgaria’s emblematic sites are just a click away. Georgi Atanassov’s website www.bgpanorama.com takes you to almost 400 emblematic destinations across the country. These include panoramic views of the Rila lakes, as well as of Bulgarian churches and monasteries, the photographer says. He adds his most thrilling experiences were when he was taking photographs of the synagogue and the mosque in Sofia, as well as his climb up the belfry of the St. Alexander Nevski cathedral. And he says he will never forget the church bell ringer granny Maria, who briskly climbs up the steps to the bells where the view of Sofia is truly breathtaking. And admits that the virtual tours uploaded to his website evoked, to his own surprise, an enormous amount of interest.

“Some time ago I looked up the number of views I had and I saw that my website had been visited from over 80 countries, including exotic locations like Jamaica, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain,” says Georgi Atanassov. “All of them places I had never thought there would be so much interest from. Obviously, people were looking for information about Bulgaria and had chanced upon my virtual photographs.”

Georgi Atanassov is not the only Bulgarian photographer to be working with 360-degree photography and these websites receive visits from tens of thousands of virtual travelers on the lookout for beautiful landscapes and information about Bulgaria and its innumerable cultural and natural landmarks.

English version: Milena Daynova