Within the Stone

This unusual album is filled with full-page close-up color photos of the colors and designs found inside polished rocks and minerals. Printed in an oversize format (11.25-12.25"), the album includes 72 photos of different kinds of stones, culled from a large collection photographed by Atkinson (an early member of the Apple Computer Company, he develops digital printing methods for photography). The photos are juxtaposed with a short text by several authors, who have composed short essays on the stone's photo; some of these discuss the type of stone, others are poetry or personal reflection. An appendix contains detailed descriptions of each type of stone by Si and Ann Frazier, writers for The Lapidary Journal, and Robert Hutchinson. Not indexed. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

BILL ATKINSON has achieved distinction as an innovator in the divergent fields of nature photography, printmaking, computer science, and neuroscience. He came to photography from computer science, to which he in turn came from neuroscience. In 1978, he was recruited by Apple Computer out of the University of Washington, where he was developing a computer atlas of the human brain. He joined the six-person core Macintosh development team, which included Jef Raskin and Andy Hertzfeld—who join Bill Atkinson onstage for the 20th Birthday of the Mac keynote panel at MacWorld Expo in Boston. Atkinson was responsible for designing and implementing the Mac’s revolutionary mouse-based graphical user interface. He holds the copyright to the pull-down menu. Atkinson has gone on to make seminal contributions to the development of fine-art digital photography and printmaking. With colleague Charles Cramer, Atkinson has taught his new method to over 200 nature photographers, including Franz Lanting, Jack Dykinga, and the late Galen Rowell. WITHIN THE STONE is the first book to showcase the unprecedented intensity of saturation and definition attainable by the Atkinson method.

SI and ANN FRAZIER write regularly for The Lapidary Journal. They have been in the mineral and gem business since 1965. Si Frazier taught mineralogy at San Francisco State University. ROBERT HUTCHINSON is the author of a dozen books on geology and natural history. He has done research in mineral science at the American Museum of Natural History and in micropaleontology at Columbia University.