P#38: Bringing Out the Beauty of a Tree Fungus

Beauty in the Details

Stephen Johnson: This photograph is of a little piece of tree fungus I found in Yosemite Valley one day. It was actually during a photography workshop that I was teaching when we were walking along the trail to Mirror Lake.

Whenever I'm teaching a workshop I try to point things out as I notice them. It could be fallen bark, it could be the gesture of a branch, it could be marks in the granite walls -- it could be almost anything.

In this particular case this tiny little piece of tree fungus was probably no more than about four inches tall. It was just incredibly beautiful in the shaded side of this fallen log, so we took the time on the workshop to lower the tripods right next to the ground and really try and fill the frame with this beautiful tree fungus and take photographs. (click the image for a larger version)

In this particular case, I remember talking through the zone system because this was a film based shot. I was talking about simplicity and trying to make the photograph about only what you wanted it to be about. I think this particular piece of fungus ended up working out in almost all those ways for me.

Photographs that work out right tend to become favorites -- especially if they end up having some intrinsic beauty that tends to stay with you. Beyond that, we're getting into some of the large format digital work that I've been doing since 1994 with the 4x5 scanning back that Mike Collette built in '93.

I started using it in late '93, but Mike built a second camera for me in mid spring. I was so stunned by the image quality in terms of color accuracy, detail, revolution, and dynamic range that these 140 megapixel photographs I was making in 1994 really impressed me.

I felt the only way I could really react to what this new found digital camera system could deliver was to dream up some ambitious project and throw myself into it to see if it was realistic to actually photograph with a back that, at that point, took almost four minutes to make a single photograph as the sensor scanned across the back of the 4x5 viewing area.

I dreamed up this project on the National Parks that I call "With a New Eye" and proceeded to embark on that project. We had a joint press conference with the Ansel Adams gallery in June of '94 in Yosemite Valley and announced this project to the public and started raising money for it.

I had originally had about eight to twelve parks in mind. I ended up doing 52 over ten years. I think it was partly the seduction and partly the fact that I was raising a family at the time and had lots of other stuff to do at the same time as I was doing the project.

It became a long-term look at a subtler, more pastel, more intimate and, I think in my own mind at least, honest view of these places. It really became a distillation of both my aesthetic and the potentials of digital photography.

In Closing

Some photographs, and some photography techniques and tools, really push the bar. Not everyone could take something as simple as a tree fungus and turn it into a stunning work of art, but that's exactly what Stephen Johnson did with this artistic photo.