On Tuesday, I took a canoe trip down the Wisconsin River starting just west of Blackhawk Island State Natural Area, ending near the River Walk and downtown Wisconsin Dells. I passed by several of the sites landscape photographer H.H. Bennett helped make famous during his career photographing the area from 1865 to 1908.
Afterwards, I made a visit to the H.H. Bennett Studio and Museum to see Bennett's work up close. One of the highlights of the museum was seeing Bennett's images for the first time in 3D as the stereoscopic images he started making in 1868. Bennett started making the stereoscope images because he realized "that the three dimensional aspect of the rock formations would be lost in two-dimensional photographs." (1)
At the museum, the Bennett stereoscopic images are viewable in 3D by using a set of glasses which separate the right-eye view from the left-eye view. I thought, "I wonder what other ways people people could see these images in 3D?" I recall that there are some 3D televisions out now, but that can't be cheap. Then I remembered that I had seen a post by Marcos Torres on abduzeedo.com using animated gif images to fake a 3D effect.
So, I present here the gimmicky (and mildy annoying) but cheap & easy method of displaying one of Bennett's photos in 3D. By quickly switching back and forth between the left- and right-eye views of the stereoscopic image, we can visualize some of the three dimensionality of the scene:
What I would like to try next is using some of the 3D features in Photoshop CS4 to create a limited 3D model using the stereoscope images. I have seen plenty of tutorials on making stereoscope images from 3D models, but have not seen any 3D models derived from stereoscope images. There must be a way to use something like the animated gif method to create a smoother animation showing off some of the three dimensionality of the scene.
It would be cool to have a slow pan from the left-eye view to the right-eye view for something like a documentary. Got any ideas?
You can read more about the Bennett collection and see more images on the Wisconsin Historical Society's website or on their Flickr page.
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No. But I want to add something only slightly related. In the 1950s, my father used his stereo slide camera quite a lot. These give you the backlit 3D effect like a Viewmaster. I found a box of his 3D slides and a viewer when I was cleaning up a few months ago, after mom died. And the effect of seeing my grandparents and mother in 3D slides is exactly like having dead loved ones visit you in a dream.
ReplyDeleteHi Paul,
ReplyDeleteGood to see you are revisiting the 3-D idea. I noticed an animated gif that had the effect a week or so ago, and was wondering how that worked. The picture that you posted is just awesome. Maybe we can experiment with some shots?
Kyle
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