Book DescriptionWith this book of color photographs of the polished hearts of stones portrayed as natural paintings, 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...