P3D Flat stereo

[fj834@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Dr. George A. Themelis)]

>George, I also find great pleasure in taking good pictures with little
>depth - no argument there!  I just do not shoot such subjects in stereo.
>If I did, and then presented them as great 3-D pictures, many in my
>audience would sense that stereo photography doesn't produce much
>depth, and isn't worth the trouble.   That's why I am fighting "flat" stereo.

I am not fighting "flat stereo".  I accept it as a fact of life.  It is a
fact that when your subject is far away, it will have little depth.  A good
degree of "flat stereo" has been present with us from the old stereo views
to more recent View Master photography.  

When I give a stereo slide presentation with 50 to 150 slides, some
pictures will have less depth than others.  Yet they are part of the
presentation.  The viewers will develop their own sense of depth variation
and judge for themselves.  I feel no pressure to only present "sufficient
depth".  As I said, I put good photography first and stereo effect second. 
I will be happy to show a good image that has little depth as part of a
stereo presentation.

>(And I know that I can get "depth" by putting a tumbleweed in the
>foreground. But, justifying stereo photography, by having to add
>irrelevant objects for depth, is going too far in my view.)

Adding objects in the foreground to enhance the sense of depth is perfectly
acceptable in my view.  The challenge is to produce a nice stereo image
that is appealing to the audience and carries the realism of stereo
photography.  Why is the tumbleweed irrelevant?  It was there in the first
place, wasn't it?  I would make it part of the picture, if I feel that it
belongs there.

To go one step further, I will not hesitate to show a totally flat picture
where the only sense of depth comes from mounting the image behind the
stereo window (where is Emanon when we need him? :-))  I have quite a few
panoramic pictures that I took from the top of Acropolis and Lycabettus
Hill (somewhere near Slovakia :-))  I have no problem showing these.  They
look fine mixed with more "depthy" shots in my "Greece" show.

George Themelis

PS.  In another post yesterday that has not appeared yet, I said that the
portraits of your model look better in 2d than 3d.  I will dig it out and
resent it tonight.


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