Triple Vision

When I was about ten years old, my cousin Michelle and I were playing dress up in our grandma’s attic. We found stoles and strings of beads and hats with veils. And shoes…my word, the woman had shoes! In amongst the various articles of clothing, we’d find some other treasure. One was a cookbook that was a step by step guide to making fried chicken. When I say “step by step”, I mean the instructions started with how to kill it and pluck it.
We also found a walking stick that had the coolest swirling design carved in it. The “design” turned out to be the work of termites. My grandpa had found that perfectly straight stick with the termites long since gone, and thought it would be a neat conversation piece.
The object that held my attention for the rest of that musty afternoon in the attic was a gadget I found.
It was a stereoscope sitting on a box of post cards.

I was so spellbound by that device! It was my first introduction to 3D and I was hooked.
Several years ago, someone used the idea of lining up stereoscopic digital pictures and voila… Magic Eye© posters, books and calendars were born. I’ve always been a sucker for those.
JL is one of those people who’s never been able to “see” them, and I’ll admit it’s hard at first until you train your brain to *un-focus your eyes. That’s the key.
Today’s blog is a “how to” for those of you who can’t seem to see the magic picture inside all the squiggles and dots.
We’ll start with the original stereoscope type postcard picture.

This is typical of the type of vacation postcards people would send to friends when traveling.
It consists of two identical pictures (somewhat skewed from left/right perspectives). The objective is to look at this picture and slightly cross your eyes so that you see three.
Once you’ve done that, focus on the picture that your eyes have created – the one in the middle. All of the sudden, it will have depth and crisp clarity that the original two didn’t have.
That is the same method you use when looking at a Magic Eye© photos. Practice a few times with a stereoscope picture and your eyes will sort of have a memory of what to do to focus on one of those digital pictures.
Here’s an easier picture to start with that doesn’t have a lot of distracting colors.

You should have been able to see a bunny near the center in that picture.
If you did, then move on to one a little more complex with colors.

That one was just a bunch of 3-D wormholes. I counted 11.
Once you’ve got it down, you’ll be able to hold focus on moving 3-D object whether animate or true life.
Remember, cross your eyes slightly until you’ve made a third picture appear in the middle and then focus on that one.
Enjoy.