Stephen Sharnoff is a photographer, especially of

botanical Botany, also called plant science (or plant sciences), plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany ...

and lichen subjects. He specializes in close-up botanical color work. He is also a research associate at the

University and Jepson Herbaria The University and Jepson Herbaria are two herbaria that share a joint facility at the University of California, Berkeley holding over 2,200,000 botanical specimens, the largest such collection on the US West Coast. These botanical natural hi ...

of the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

and a past associate of the

Missouri Botanical Garden The Missouri Botanical Garden is a botanical garden located at 4344 Shaw Boulevard in St. Louis, Missouri. It is also known informally as Shaw's Garden for founder and philanthropist Henry Shaw. Its herbarium, with more than 6.6 million ...

.Stephen Sharnoff, National Geographic
/ref> With his wife, Sylvia Sharnoff, and the Canadian lichenologist Irwin M. Brodo, he was photographer for ''

Lichens of North America Irwin M. Brodo (born 1935) is an emeritus scientist at the Canadian Museum of Nature, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He is an authority on the identification and biology of lichens. Irwin Brodo was honored in 1994 with an Acharius Medal presented to ...

'', which won the 2002

National Outdoor Book Award The National Outdoor Book Award (NOBA) was formed in 1997 as an American-based non-profit program which each year presents awards honoring the best in outdoor writing and publishing. It is housed at Idaho State University and chaired by Ron Watte ...

for nature guidebooks.

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

Thomas Lovejoy Thomas Eugene Lovejoy III (August 22, 1941December 25, 2021) was an American ecologist who was President of the Amazon Biodiversity Center, a Senior Fellow at the United Nations Foundation and a university professor in the Environmental Science a ...

commented on the lichen photography that it was ''"the twenty-first-century equivalent of Audubon's Birds of America."'' The collection of 1,600 voucher specimens made during this project was initially held by the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Ottawa, Canada but was donated to the United States National Herbarium in 2005. In 2016, the trio, with additional collaborator Susan Laurie-Bourque, produced ''Keys to Lichens of North America: Revised and Expanded''. A further collaboration between the two Sharnoffs and other photographers contributed pictures for ''Macrolichens of the Pacific Northwest''. In 2012 he was awarded a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

to support his science writing. He authored and provided photographs for ''A Field Guide to California Lichens'' published in 2014. In the late 2020s, his enthusiasm for preserving old-growth

Douglas fir The Douglas fir (''Pseudotsuga menziesii'') is an evergreen conifer species in the pine family, Pinaceae. It is native to western North America and is also known as Douglas-fir, Douglas spruce, Oregon pine, and Columbian pine. There are thre ...

in the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...

led to a new conservation group where he is the vice-president, the Friends of Douglas-Fir National Monument, aiming for the establishment of protection for an area of forest in

Oregon Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idah ...

Publications

Sharnoff has contributed photographs to several books as well as magazines. These include: * Irwin M. Brodo, Susan Laurie-Bourque, Sylvia Duran Sharnoff and Stephen Sharnoff (2016) ''Keys to Lichens of North America: Revised and Expanded'' Yale University Press, 424pp * Stephen Sharnoff (2014) ''A Field Guide to California Lichens'' Yale University Press, 424pp * Irwin M. Brodo, Sylvia Duran Sharnoff and Stephen Sharnoff (2001) ''Lichens of North America '' Yale University Press, 795 pp The Sharnoff's photographs have appeared in '' National Geographic'', ''

Smithsonian Magazine ''Smithsonian'' is the official journal published by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The first issue was published in 1970. History The history of ''Smithsonian'' began when Edward K. Thompson, the retired editor of ''Life'' ma ...

'', '' Equinox Magazine'' and ''Bay Nature''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sharnoff, Stephen Lichenologists Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Nature photographers