The State Fair of Texas: Personal Project 3/3

This year’s project at the State Fair of Texas was to photograph it in glorious 3D!

I’ve been fascinated with three dimensional photography for a few years now, but it’s turned into a bit of an obsession recently. I purchased a Viewmaster Personal Stereo camera on eBay in 2008, and since then I’ve made dozens of personal Viewmaster reels from trips and family get-togethers. For Christmas two years ago, Erin purchased a Fuji W3 camera for me, and I’m so glad that she did, because since then the camera has been discontinued in North America. It can only be found by resellers now, and the average price for it is over $800.

It has been a struggle with how to present images from the W3, though. Fuji made a stereo digital frame, which is very expensive, and I don’t personally have a 3D TV. A television display wouldn’t be something I could peruse easily, too.

I’m currently fascinated with the old stereo photographs from the Civil War to WWII. Stereo photography was very common from 1860 to 1960, and a lot of the historical photographs we have from those time periods are actually the single images from a stereo view. The practice was limited to professional photographers, though, until the 1930s, when several camera manufacturers developed personal models for hobbyists, and stereo photography flourished until the 1960s, when most of those camera models were discontinued. Very few people, except for those who really enjoyed it, practiced stereo photography in the meantime. With the advent of 3D television, a few camera makers released digital 3D cameras, as Fuji did with the W3, but many of these have also been recently discontinued.

The practice can’t seem to catch on permanently, even though to me, the experience of viewing a 3D image is far superior to viewing the same subject matter in 2D. There’s something about seeing a historical photo from 1900 in 3D that can’t be conveyed in 2D. The image feels “alive” in a way, and I sometimes can imagine myself actually being there. I also notice details in a 3D image that I just wouldn’t bother seeking out in a 2D photograph.

Most of us see in 3D. An image displayed in 2D has a sort of wall in front of it. We know it’s just a photograph, and we see it for its qualities, but we also aren’t likely to believe the scene is immediately in front of us as reality. It’s flat. A huge job for a professional photographer is to present a 2D image with the illusion of depth, and there are a number of techniques to do this, but it’s not the same. A 2D image is still 2D, and our minds, which are used to 3D, can’t see it any other way.

But to view an image in 3D we often have to use specialized glasses. There is also a “cross eye” technique, but this can be difficult to do and sometimes creates a headache. In other words, you have to go out of your way to view an image in 3D. This is simply the only good reason why 3D photography isn’t the standard in our world instead of 2D photography. 2D photography doesn’t require an additional effort.

One of the best viewers for 3D images was one of its first viewers – the Holmes Stereoscope viewer pictured above. A very good modern design of the same type is the Brian May Stereocard Owl viewer. I purchased both this year, and so I decided to print the State Fair images from my W3 as Holmes stereo cards.

Here are my fifteen favorite images from this year’s Fair!

How did I do it? There’s a really excellent shareware program called StereoPhoto Maker. This program was vital, and it was super easy to learn and use. I decided to use my professional photo lab, H&H, for the prints, although these would be also be good as high-end inkjet prints at 600 dpi or above.

You can download and save the full size files by right clicking on these numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. These fifteen views are presented for anyone to enjoy and use on a personal basis. Please do not charge money for them. Thank you!

I also photographed the Fair with my Viewmaster camera. Those won’t be posted here, but the long exposure capabilities of that camera allowed me to create some really cool night images.

Go to the Fair! You still have a week! Erin and I have found it actually gets more enjoyable each year that you go.