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Online Exclusive Portrait of a Giant Jim Balog's groundbreaking photograph of the Stagg Tree (read an excerpt from Quest for the Green Giant) required a trusty digital camera, plenty of warm clothes, and a slight disregard for personal safety. The details:
THE TECHNOLOGY
"When I started this project, I spent my first week in the field shooting redwoods on film because I really didn't trust that a digital camera could hold up to the moisture conditions. When I got back home, I realized I had about 75 pictures, and I began arranging them on a big sheet of matchboard. I knew that to compose the final shot I would eventually have to scan each of the pictures, which is not cheap. It became obvious that digital was the solution."
THE REASSEMBLY
"After the first pass to assemble the composite [more than 400 individual photos were used], we've been tweaking and perfecting the Stagg photo for nearly two years now—color, density, and in a few cases there were compositional things that needed improvement. Between the first composite and what appears in Adventure, easily 200 plus hours were spent in post-production on the picture."
THE RESULT
"Despite the fact that this was shot looking through a rainy snow or a snowy rain, it comes out looking like it's an average, pearly light kind of a day. The tree has singularity and presence. I consider myself a photographic artist who looks for fresh ways for humans to look at nature and to understand themselves in relationship to it. I hope that somewhere in this tree project, I've started to evoke the personality and individuality of each tree. That's the goal."
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