Customer Reviews

Within the Stone: Nature's Abstract Rock Art

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This book is easily the most striking collection of natural color photographs I've seen. By photographing the stone surfaces as flat, full frame objects, the images take on a vivid abstract sense that is just breathtaking. Atkinson's meticulous attention to every detail of preparing the book really shines - you'll have to get out a magnifying glass to believe you're not looking at original prints.

Personally, I would have paired the scientific text describing the minerals at the back of the book with the full frame photos and left out the other "writing". Random poetry and essays seem irrelevant next to such dazzling imagery. But this is really a minor point - you're buying this book for the pictures!

Within The Stone is a magical book - full of surprises, and delights - but not exactly a book one can sum up in a few words. Is this high art? An abstract, post-post-post-expressionist fanatasy? Or is this natural histroy at its best? A jouney deep behind the surface of the world we live in? Truth or ficiton? Poetry or prose? In fact, this book of intensely vivid color photographs is all that and more. Photographs don't usually, or easily, cross the line from docmentary description to ambiguously mysterious art. But these large photographs of exotic rocks and minerals from around the world do just that. They escape from their literal and mineral points of departure. They soar, and our imagination soars with them...

Bill Atkinson, the photographer-creator of Withn The Stone is responisble for more than just its stunning photography. In his previous life, Bill was instrumental in creating the original Macintosh computer, and the graphical user interface that the whole world now takes for granted. In recent years, Bill has focused his computer-science expertise on his other pasion, photography, sharing his discoveries with leading professional photographers across the country, and becoming, in a real sense, the "Ansel Adams" of digital photo printing. Having pushed the limits of photographic printing, Atkinson has now done the same thing for bookmaking. Four-color presses have never before been capable of reproducing colors as intense as those in these images. So Atkinson had to develop a whole new method of color printing for the Japanese firm that printed this exquisite book.

Thus, Within The Stone is not only a remarkable artistic achievement, it's a technical breakthrough as well, the new benchmark in color photo book making. But most importantly, it is a major aesthetic creation. These are fresh images, images that transcend their literal content, windows into a unexpected world. This is a book you will return to again and again, discovering something new each time you look Within The Stone.

Nowhere I have I seen diverse elements join so naturally as in this book. Science-Art-Beauty-and-Truth all merge through walls I did not know I had. Then I find myself deep inside the colors and nuances of polished crystal, which thanks to Mr. Atkinson's paradigm shattering digital photography, all of us can see, really see, for the first time.

These photographs look like abstract art at first, but as you study them you realize they have a flow, complexity, and range of colors that paintings can't duplicate.
I also recommend Mineral Masterpieces which shows the sculptural shapes as well as the infinite range of colors in the best crystals.

This is the <u>BEST ART BOOK</u> I have ever found to give as a present. The photography is stunning. Atkinson has accomplished something wonderous and filled with beauty. This is a unique collection you want to show your family and friends and, perhaps, it will even reconcile your enemies. The accompanying commentary by the famous and near famous is sweet icing on a very substanial and fulfilling cake.

If you are, like me, a rockhound or a gem and mineral lover you will love this book. Atkinson is one of the foremost artists in the genre of Rocks as Art.

More on Bill Atkinson - from the Product Description:

BILL ATKINSON completes his transition from whiz kid of Silicon Valley to high priest of Silica.
After helping to usher in the age of personal computing by designing the graphical user interface of the Macintosh computer, Atkinson turned his visual and technical talents to nature photography. While shooting in the Painted Desert, Atkinson became intrigued with the brilliant colors in the petrified wood littering the ground. He brought home some polished rock slabs, photographed them in natural color and without magnification, and was enthralled. The photographs looked more like paintings of forgotten dreams than either rocks or photographs. Atkinson went on to borrow and photograph thousands of art-quality stones at gem shows.

From these thousands of stones, Atkinson has picked for WITHIN THE STONE those seventy-two that yielded the most striking, the most poetic, and the most ineffable images. Many of the photographs suggest the styles of particular masters of modern painting: Klee, Klimt, Turner, O'Keefe.
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This book is page after page of gorgeous abstract artworks that just happen to be a polished surface of Mother Nature's design.

Within the Stone will make a gorgeous coffee table book for gem and mineral lovers as well as abstract art followers.

As a photographer-artist I am hapy to come upon this book. Although Atkinson is more of a scientist his impeccable craft presents this part of nature - stones - as rich food for the mind and imagination. For me this book is a companion to The Deep which is filled with photographs of creatures in the deeo sea.

Yes, on enjoying this very fine book one is awed at the origin of "abstract in nature". Many fine observers have been there,in the closeup but not to the extent Bill Atkinson has done. Really inspiring, one can but wonder where it might end... or does it not. Not only a fine addition to a fine library,it is printed to wow!,but a sure continous return will remind any Photographer where they stand.

Please don't dismiss this as close-ups of a bunch on stones. The macrophotography in this book is absolutely astonishing. It gives a whole new depth to the beauty of such minerals as agates, jaspers, petrified wood, and (my favorite) pietersite. Some of the photos remind me of Hubble pictures of nebula, others of surreal landscapes. Visually mesmerizing, the details in these stones will draw you in again and again.
This book is worth buying just for the illustrations, but along with them are poems and essays by seven writers, all accomplished in both the sciences and the arts. Each was given a set of photos as inspiration for their contributions. These range from scientific to philosophical to literary to just plain quirky. Several are personal reflections that many readers will relate to.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in how eloquent people see, think, and express themselves. It would be an asset to a waiting room for mental health practitioners in particular, allowing the burdened mind to ease into contemplation of a world of exquisite color and pattern. And no college geology department should be without it.

Recieved the book quickly and in good condition. Haven't spent any time reading the poetry in the book. The stones highlighted are some of my favorites. I didn't realize many were going to be several views of the same type of stones. It's a feast for the eyes. Thank you