The Inner World of Stone

ONCE UPON A TREE Submerged eons ago in mineral-rich water, the once-living tissue of an ancient tree has been replaced in petrification by silica from dissolved volcanic ash and tinted red from hematite, yellow from iron hydroxide and green from chromium, appreciated as a close-up composition by inventorturned-photographer Bill Atkinson.

Bill Atkinson sees the world through different eyes. An inventor, designer and thinker, he built a darkroom at the age of 14 and began to print photographs-at first black and white, then color. His mother had given him a subscription to Arizona Highways four years before, in 1961, and Bill, a native Californian, cites the photographs he clipped from the magazine as early inspirations for his lifelong fascination with both photography and the outdoors. In the early 1970s, Bill found another avenue to explore: the world of the computer. Attending college in San Diego, he became friends with a visual arts professor named Jef Raskin, who encouraged Bill's experiments in computeranimated film, among them one that showed the movement of air pollution through the Los Angeles area. Bill went on to do graduate work in neuroscience, making the first computer animation of the human brain, one that's still used in medical schools today. He then signed on with a new company near his California hometown-Apple Computer. Bill designed much of the interface for the Lisa computer, along the way inventing the pull-down menu commonly used. He went on to work on the first Macintosh computer, creating many of its programs. But whenever he could, he headed outdoors and made photographs. And not long after becoming a full-time photographer in 1995, Bill found his way to Arizona. “In 1999,” he recalls, “while I was photographing the Arizona landscape at Petrified Forest, I became intrigued by the colors and shapes hidden inside the rocks.” He began to collect specimens bought at rock shops and events such as Tucson's annual Gem and Mineral Show, perfecting techniques of lighting and scanning that bring the lens of his camera ever deeper into the secret world of stone, processes to yield images that take on the appearance of abstract paintings and invite long study and meditation. Al EDITOR'S NOTE: Bill Atkinson's book, Within the Stone: Nature's Abstract Rock Art, BrownTrout Publishers Inc., 2004, presents 72 of the artist's best photographs that include his unique images of petrified wood as well as varieties of stone from around the world.

THAT'S HEAVY, MAN Petrified wood (far right), with its nearly solid quartz content, weighs roughly 150 pounds per cubic foot.

ROCK SOLID Much petrified wood is used in giftrelated items such as jewelry and coffee-table curiosities. But, inspired by his photographic subjects' bold patterns and colors, Atkinson says, "These rocks are the art, not what man makes of them."