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Eleven years after Dr. Raphael Mechoulam identified the THC molecule, a man named Steven Sasson built the first digital camera. It weighed eight pounds and, when it took its first picture in December 1975, the camera needed 23 seconds to transfer the photo onto a cassette tape.<\/p>\n
In the decades since these two trailblazing scientific discoveries, both cannabis research and digital photography have developed into massive industries (albeit at different levels of mainstream integration). In the process, both industries have often sashayed along the arbitrary line between science and art, making room for passionate individuals \u2014 both amateur and professional \u2014 to push the field forward. Backyard growers discovered how to breed for different desirable plant characteristics. Family photographers developed new lighting techniques. And, with increasing regularity, these individuals have helped the two fields of scientific research and cannabis documentation intersect.<\/p>\n
Erik Christiansen<\/a> is perhaps the best example of such an individual who sits at the crossroads of cannabis research and digital photography, science and art. The 30-year-old founded the popular cannabis photography company Nugshots in 2009, released a book called \u201cGreen: A Field Guide to Marijuana<\/a>\u201d in 2015 and has since become one of the most renowned cannabis photographers in the industry. While there are plenty of excellent cannabis photographers working today, Christiansen\u2019s photos are uniquely technical and motivated by a special scientific curiosity.<\/p>\n Christiansen stacked 200 photos to capture this Purple Pakistani Chitral trichome. Its purple coloring is rare, and Christiansen says \u201cthe cells that are purple in these photos are the same cells that run amber as trichomes mature.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For example, he\u2019s photographed a single cannabis seed through a lens that magnified the seed\u2019s surface 20 times, revealing an ethereal opal surface of canyons and ridges. He\u2019s stacked 45 macro photographs on top of each other to show a pair of conjoined trichome heads. And perhaps most importantly, he\u2019s figured out how to stack photographs into videos that zoom around and into a bud with near-frightening clarity.<\/p>\n For one recent \u201chyperzoom\u201d video, Christiansen photographed a single Wedding Cake cola 2,160 times. The process involved photographing the cola at five different levels of zoom. For the first four levels, Christiansen took 360 photos \u2014 a photo for each degree around the plant. On the most zoomed-in level, he took 720 photos. Then, over a process of months he experimented with how to stitch the photos together into a video that zooms 1400 percent into the cola, while it rotates in empty space. Imagine: a video that zips from a full branch, to a few nugs and leaves, to a handful of glistening trichomes, and back out again, in 10 smooth seconds.<\/p>\n When I catch Christiansen on the phone one afternoon, he\u2019s on the road. He\u2019s visiting his family and friends in San Diego, where he used to live before he moved last year with his girlfriend and business partner Beacon Nesbitt to Bend, Oregon.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019d lived in San Diego our whole lives, so the mountains and rivers and trees were calling to us, plus there\u2019s more work up there anyway,\u201d Christiansen says. \u201cLiving in Bend, we\u2019re three hours from Portland, a couple hours from Seattle, and six to eight hours from northern California. It just makes sense, and we love it up there.\u201d<\/p>\n Christiansen captured this tiny section of a Tenzin Kush leaf by clipping it off the plant in order to photograph it from the top down.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n He travels a good deal for work, visiting clients \u2014 usually dispensaries and breeders \u2014 across the hubs of the adult-use legal cannabis world. But it wasn\u2019t always like this. When Christiansen first started photographing cannabis in 2009, he says \u201cno one wanted to pay to have pictures.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLegalization made companies need marketing,\u201d says Christiansen. \u201cIn 2010 and 2011, I would go into dispensaries I would ask them if they needed a photographer and they would say, \u2018We\u2019re good because we have a guy in the back with a camera.\u2019 I used to go in and purchase the dry bud to photograph myself \u2014 when I\u2019d ask them for specific photogenic buds, most of the time they\u2019d say no \u2014 and now people are bringing me into the back on a perfect day of harvest and thanking me for being there.\u201d<\/p>\n But while the regulated market is the driving force behind his cannabis photography business today, Christiansen credits prohibition for creating such a high demand for cannabis photography.<\/p>\n \u201cProhibition has prevented it from being normal to see a plant,\u201d says Christiansen. \u201cMajor growers have to protect their plants, they can\u2019t just bring people into their grow rooms because you run a risk of bringing microscopic things into the grow room such as bugs and mold.\u201d<\/p>\n A bud of Moonstone Black, photographed by Christiansen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Through his photographs, Christiansen makes the cannabis plant accessible to the average viewer. In fact, most cannabis photography does this, but what sets Christiansen apart, is the extra depth he brings to each image, providing the unique perspective on the bud that allows cannabis consumers to consider the plant in a more scientific way.<\/p>\n Some of the earliest digital photographs (so early, in fact, that they don\u2019t technically fall into the category of what we consider a digital photography) were taken by NASA\u2019s Mariner 4 spacecraft<\/a>. As the Mariner 4 flew past Mars, it took 21 grainy, black and white photographs of the planet\u2019s surface and beamed them back to Earth on July 15, 1965. These photographs brought an unexplored planet into the public reality, allowing Americans to explore a foreign object through a collection of captured light. Christiansen\u2019s photography does the same today.<\/p>\n In reality, Christiansen\u2019s photography is an inversion of space photography, focusing inward to the microscopic level rather than out into the cosmos. But the experience of perceiving an object move through space and light is similar, no matter the distance covered.<\/p>\n A company\u2019s logo is reflected through the trichome heads of a Moonstruck White plant.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Watching a collection of 360 macro photographs of a single trichome, stitched together to rotate on an axis, feels galactic. A hyperzoom video gets so close to a trichome head that colors and focus warp through its translucent head. Through Christiansen\u2019s creations, the cannabis plant \u2014 foreign to so many of its devoted consumers \u2014 becomes explored.<\/p>\n Of course, Christiansen recognizes that he\u2019s not a scientist, just an amateur with a passion for understanding more about cannabis. But his photographs still provide viewers with the opportunity to observe and study the plant. For example, Christiansen once took a video<\/a> through a microscope that shows what happens when a pin pops a trichome head<\/a>, releasing the resin, which led to a discussion of the sturdiness of trichomes present in different strains.<\/p>\n \u201cJust yesterday I was talking with someone about how some trichomes aren\u2019t that fragile,\u201d Christiansen said. \u201cSome feel super gritty and they won\u2019t pop when you touch them. And I didn\u2019t even realize that.\u201d<\/p>\n Grapefruit Diesel, photographed by Christiansen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Today, as countless companies dedicate themselves to researching the cannabis in an attempt to monetize its secrets and profit from their discoveries, Christiansen\u2019s photography is a welcome, democratic endeavor.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to give people a better sense of education on what\u2019s actually going on around the plant \u2014 really understanding what\u2019s going on and how the plant is forming,\u201d says Christiansen. \u201cThere\u2019s always new things to discover.\u201d<\/p>\n Originally published in Issue 32 of Cannabis Now.\u00a0LEARN MORE<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n TELL US,<\/b>\u00a0what kind of cannabis photography do you like?<\/p>\n The post A Photographer\u2019s Guide to the Cannabis Galaxy<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Eleven years after Dr. Raphael Mechoulam identified the THC molecule, a man named Steven Sasson built the first digital camera. It weighed eight pounds and, when it took its first picture in December 1975, the camera needed 23 seconds to transfer the photo onto a cassette tape. In the decadesContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":30685,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,779,6513,99,6514,4349,6515,6516,85,5279,6517,6518,5097],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30684"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30684"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30686,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30684\/revisions\/30686"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Purple-Pakistani-Chitral.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nMarketing Marijuana<\/h4>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\nExploring the Cannabis Galaxy<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: A Photographer\u2019s Guide to the Cannabis Galaxy<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"