Rheinstein Now & Then

Friends and long-time readers of this blog know I love 3D images, and have even dabbled in making them myself. I've also got a small collection of antique stereographs: pairs of photos printed on thick curved cardboard that are viewed through a stereoscope to show a 3D picture. They were early View-Masters. At the turn of the 20th Century, most well-appointed parlors were equipped with a viewer and a cabinet full of 3D cards to entertain guests, bringing the exotic wonders of the world to people who'd never see them otherwise.

I especially like stereographs of places I've been. It's fun (and a little spooky) to compare my modern experience of a place to that of someone a century ago. At an antiques fair yesterday, I found a card of Rheinstein Castle; since Karen and I just took a cruise up the Rhine River, I had to bring the card home and check whether we'd seen that castle ourselves.

And we did!

Here's the stereograph. The back of the card provides a little history of the castle, which Wikipedia expands upon. The card doesn't have a copyright date, but most of them were made in the late 19th Century. The fad died out in the 1910s, probably related to the coming of silent films.

Here's a modern photo of Rheinstein Castle taken from nearly the same vantage point. Some features are different, others are the same. It's interesting that the perilous-looking steps with curved railing that lead to the right-most tower look like they haven't changed in a century.

Our river boat chugged up the Rhine River in the distant background, which in fact is almost exactly where we were when I snapped this photo:

There, that hulking silhouette on the right bank.

It's distant and dark, and unfortunately the only picture of this castle I got. Cropping and fiddling in Photoshop brings out a few more details that make it a definite match.

A century after Rheinstein Castle was visited by those two women lounging on a neighboring battlement, I was there too. Travel's good for making these connections with history--not just the centuries of history represented by the castle, but the century of tourism connecting those women to me. C'mon, that's cool!

Well, I think so.

Enter the THIRD Dimension-n-n-n-n-n!

A couple of posts ago, I concluded my Rhine River Cruise trip report with a three-dimensional photo of the Strasbourg Cathedral (above). I shot more photo sequences on that trip intending to make 3D pics ("anaglyphs") out of them, and put a few together this morning. You'll need old-school red-blue 3-D glasses to see them.

In theory, making 3D pics like this is easy. You need two views of the same scene taken from slightly different vantage points, in the same way your eyes provide depth perception by seeing the world from two slightly different angles a few inches apart. So what I do is snap a photo, take one step to the right or left, and snap the exact same view. To cover my bases, I sometimes took four or five shots in a row like that: shoot, scootch, shoot, scootch, etc.

You can do the same thing if you're in a vehicle moving horizontally past a scene--for instance, on a boat on a river! Take a shot, wait a second for the boat to move, take another shot: two views of the same scene from slightly different vantage points. (That's how NASA produces 3D photos of asteroids, comets, moons, and a lot of other space objects: take the first shot, fly by for a few more seconds or minutes, and take the second shot.)

Then in Photoshop ("duotone") you turn the right image transparent red, the left image transparent green-blue, overlap them, and faster than you can say "Holy House of Wax!" you've got a 3D photo.

In practice, I've found there's a lot of art involved in getting the angles, colors, and alignment just right to get a good 3D effect. Some of these work better than others.

There are many other approaches to making 3D pics. You can make stereoscopic images, like the old Viewmaters slides, which let you use full color. In theory, you could also make full-color red-blue anaglyphs by deleting all the non-red out of one picture, all the non-blue out of the other picture, and overlapping them like I do here. I haven't had much success with that unless the original colors are balanced just right, which most of the real world isn't.

Marksburg Castle. This is one of my less successful anaglyphs because I think there's too big a difference between the angles. Also, I shot them from the boat that was moving away from the castle in addition to past it, so there's some unwanted movement involved. Still, I think the 3D works. 

A town along the Middle Rhine. There's also a big difference between these two angles, which gives the town a "cardboard cut-out" feel. But I like it. 

A statue in the Cologne Cathedral. The upward angle gives it a nice depth of field, I think.

Cathedral in Colmar. Notice how the lady walking by appears twice (by the lamp post and by the corner at center-right), as her position changed in the time it took me to shoot two pictures.

Finally, try this. It works by a technique called "free fusion" that was also used in those "Magic Eye" posters that were popular 20 years ago. Stare at the picture and relax your eyes--don't cross them--as if you're looking through your monitor. The left and right images may merge into a center one that pops into 3D. Some folks can do it and some can't (my wife Karen is convinced the Magic Eye posters were just a joke people played along with to make other people look foolish). With a bit of practice/exercise it gets easy. 

The Great 3-D War

Bust out your red and blue 3-D specs. (If you're one of the 50 people who bought my limited-edition zine a couple of years ago, you already have a pair!).

Sometime in the past couple of days, some Facebook friend of mine posted something about World War I. That's about as specific as I can be. Facebook ephemera flits, floats, and quickly fades. But this one stuck a little because it reminded me of something I've meant to try.

I've mentioned before that I collect stereocards. They're basically Victorian Viewmasters, popular in parlors around the turn of the last century. Two photos shot simultaneously a few inches apart from each other are mounted on a heavy card and viewed through a stereoscope, which merges the images into a 3-D scene. It's easy to understand why these were so popular. They were often published in series with a theme: world travel, religious tableau, slice of life, natural wonders. Stereocards offered a startling "you are there" experience for people who'd never have a chance to see such sights in real life.

A stereoscope with a stereocard loaded for viewing. This isn't mine, but looks a lot like it.

It's an affordable hobby. Stereocards are common, and are typically found in antiques stores for a few bucks each, depending on quality. The most I've paid for one is $20, but it was exceptional. I'm sure that in 1900 a well-appointed parlor could have hundreds of cards. I've got a few dozen.

Pulling today's themes together: what I've wanted to try, and my friend's Facebook post prodded me to do, is convert some old stereocards so their images could be viewed with modern red-blue 3-D glasses. It's easy in theory: since the photos are already black and white, just use Photoshop to convert the left eye into the proper blue color, the right eye into the proper red color, and overlap them.

Turns out it's pretty easy in practice, as well!

Here are two of my stereocards shot in the trenches of World War I.

BTW, the bottom one is the one I paid $20 for. I give it free to you.

Photoshopping them as described produces these:

I'm moderately happy with the results. I think some detail is lost in converting the images to red and blue, especially in dim areas. In person, these views really pop! But I'm calling this experiment a success.

I've got a lot of these cards. Maybe when I get a little time, I'll convert some more of my favorites.

Antiquated

Yesterday Karen and I went to an Antiques Fair, which often puts me in an agreeably reflective mood. I like antiques, particularly antique gadgets. If I allowed myself, I could fill a room with old radios (vacuum tubes!) and telegraph equipment (electromagnets!). Fortunately, I remain strong and my home uncluttered. Relatively.

I do have a small collection of stereo cards and a stereoscope with which to view them. These early 3-D Viewmasters were all the rage in the 1890s. I can imagine Victorian parlors with cabinets full of stereo cards, families and guests gathering after supper to go through them.

Like this: a Time Machine that, sadly, only goes one way.

Stereo cards were often published in series with common themes: world travel, religious tableau, slice of life. Some were saucy. These cards would have provided a startling "you are there" experience for people who seldom went anywhere. The Holy Land and other exotic locales were popular topics. World capitals. Natural wonders. And folks sure used to love taking 3-D photos of Niagara Falls.

A typical stereo card (though not one of mine). If you have the knack for "free fusing," you can see the 3-D effect without a viewer. It's like those "Magic Eye" graphics that were popular a few years ago; don't cross your eyes, just relax them as if looking at something far away, and the two images will merge into a center 3-D image. It's a handy skill for evaluating stereo cards in the store.

I don't collect any particular themes; I just look for cards that interest me and are in good condition. It's a cheap hobby--typically $2 to $10 per card. I like photos of places I've actually been myself, as well as vistas of long-vanished life (admirals reviewing an armada of sailing ships, ranks of mounted cavalry, farmhouses on empty plains, cute little kids who all got old and died). Science is always good--one of my favorites is a 3-D image of the Moon, which really drives home the fact that it's a sphere.

If you've mastered free fusing, try this one and be dazzled.

What I appreciate most about antiques are their connections to other people's lives. I saw a fat loose-leaf photo album yesterday that appeared to capture about 20 years of a young couple's courtship and marriage, including the man's service in World War II. What was a treasure like that doing on a table for me to paw through and pay pennies on the decade for? Why isn't it with their family? Did they not have any? Or was it one of those keepsakes that would have been cherished by someone but instead just slipped away, sold off by a greedy great-aunt at the estate sale? Every abandoned photo album is a tragedy, I think.

I once found an old wedding certificate in an antique store. It had small inset photos of the husband and wife, with ornate scroll work and graceful calligraphy. They were married in a small town on the East Coast, and their surname was unusual enough that I thought I had a shot at finding a modern relative. I wrote down the info and went online to find a historical society in their county and, failing that, the town library. The librarian didn't know that particular couple but told me there were families sharing their unique last name all over the place, undoubtedly related. I returned to the antique store and, for sixty bucks, sent a little fragment of someone's history back home, where the librarian was thrilled to get it and hang it on the wall. It was the right thing to do.

Yesterday I saw a cross-stitch sampler done by a young New England girl in 1824. What would she have thought if she'd known that in 2013, a man in California--which was still Spanish terra incognita at the time--would admire her needlework? Would that mean anything to her at all? How could it possibly? But don't you wish there were some way to let her know?

Karen and I are getting to an age where the artifacts we see have gone from being things we remember in our grandparents' homes to things we remember in our parents' homes to things we actually have in our home. Crying out "hey, I bought that new!" at an antiques fair is an alarming rite of passage.

I paid $10 for three stereo cards and Karen picked up a couple of pieces of costume jewelry that looks just like the stuff we used to make fun of my Grandma for wearing but I guess is cool these days as long as you wear it ironically. What our descendants make of it is their problem.

Taking 3-D for Granite

Got a couple more blue-red anaglyphs for you today--not particularly clever, artistic, whimsical or anything, just more in a series of on-going experiments. These were shot last weekend on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe, where we spent a nice couple of days with friends who have a home there. Bust out your ol' 3-D specs and play along. And if we don't talk before the weekend, have a good one.
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My Giant Melon Head

My recent experiments making 3-D photos inspired me to go for the ultimate: a person. Since the only person hanging around my office/studio/spare bedroom 97% of the day is me, that's who you get. Break out your red-blue glasses and don't be frightened by my enormous grinning moonface.

To make this anaglyph, I rested the camera atop my computer monitor, shot a photo, slid it two inches over, and shot another while holding perrrrrfectly still. The fine print on my 3-D specs reads "This Is It" because they're the free glasses Target gave away to watch the Michael Jackson Grammy tribute with. Any port in a storm.

And then, amazingly, a split second later, I heard a thundering whoosh as something flew past my left ear. Luckily, the camera captured the moment:

Speaking of enormous moonfaces: as long as you've got your stylish glasses on, check out these 3-D pictures of Mars's moon Phobos (which Friend-of-the-Blog Sherwood Harrington pointed me to), Martian soil beneath the Phoenix lander, and our very own Moon. Give that last one a second to "click in," it's really incredible. In addition to being supercool, 3-D images actually can reveal scientific detail you might otherwise miss. But mostly they're supercool.

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Fat Cat in Favorite Chair

Another anaglyph experiment for the viewing pleasure of those of you with red-cyan 3-D glasses (mostly my girls, to whom I delivered such specs yesterday):

That's our alpha cat Rose, whiling away her afternoon in a chair four feet from mine. Luckily, convincing her to hold absolutely still between the two camera shots was not a problem. Sometimes I think cats know everything important there is to know about life.

James Cameron Owes Me $500 Million

For various reasons having nothing to do with current hit movies (really), I got up this morning wanting to play with 3-D. The theory is simple; the application is hard. If you've got a pair of the ol' red-and-blue 3-D glasses handy (and who doesn't?), check out my first black-and-white anaglyphs:

The idea is to take two photos of the same scene a couple inches apart to mimic the stereoscopic view of your two eyes. Tint the right image red and the left image cyan, as below (in Photoshop, you can convert the images to Grayscale and then Monotone). Overlap them transparently (in Photoshop, "Multiply" the top layer) and you're done. Quick and easy. In theory.

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Two pics from slightly different angles stand in for your left and right eyes.

In reality, it can be tricky to get the two layers to line up right. The depth of field--which parts pop out and which recede--is determined by how you match up the images. Any little difference between the photos, like if you tilt the camera a bit or the wind blows a branch, can ruin the illusion. I've learned that choosing the right subject and being the right distance from it is important. These three experiments turned out best, but I've got six or seven others that hardly worked at all. I also tried some techniques that give a more full-color effect, but I wasn't happy with those either.

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Whenever I'm in an antique store, I love checking out those old stereo viewers and cards that were all the rage in Victorian times. The original Viewmasters. I could imagine myself going nuts collecting hundreds of those cards someday. The red-blue technique's not the same, but seeing a picture pop off the page is just as magical as ever.

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