A few days ago there was an old stereoscopic image posted in the Smithsonian’s Bigger Picture blog. I love old images for lots of reasons, and I have real fondness for early stereoscope images. I had a stereoscope and shoebox of cardboard photos when I was a kid, and when I had a daughter I made 3D photo disks for her Viewmaster. I’ll even confess that the first time I saw a set of photos that I took through a Viewmaster I wanted to run screaming with joy into the street. It’s just too cool.
I’ve played around a lot. I used Library of Congress images in an experiment posted on my old site when I tried seeing if audio directions would be enough for creating an anaglyph in Photoshop. (It worked, but nobody really cared. And I hate listening to me, too.) With the small web presentation of these old stereoscope images it’s possible to focus your eyes so they look “through” the stereo image, resolving the double photo into one 3D image without a Viewmaster or Stereopticon. Like the “magic picture” books. I have lots of glasses laying around and for me, I still get a big kick out of red/cyan anaglyphs. Hence, I made this one from the image posted in the Smithsonian’s Bigger Picture blog. It has a really nice sense of depth. The anaglyph technique works the same with full color images; I’ve experimented with them when I had a camera and did a 3D shot of the Nittany lion shrine.
What? You don’t have any red/cyan anaglyph glasses?