[photo-3d] Walk-In Stereo / phantograms

[boris@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

Quentin Burke wrote:

>Yes on the king size analglyphs! At the last NSA in Mesa (or possibly Green
>Bay), and also at ISU Lindau, a couple of people had huge anaglyphs (I seem

What you saw in these places were anamorphic anaglyph prints: phantograms.
(Phantograms, and the history of the term phantogram itself, have been a
topic of extensive discussion on this list in the recent past - check the
archives for some interesting reading).

At Lindau, you probably saw phantograms by Achim Bahr.  His largest I
believe is one of the Castle at Neuschwanstein in Bavaria (I've not seen
it).  Big, but not lifesize...  I don't know about his most recent ones,
but the one's I've seen are all hand drawn!  He may use a 3d computer model
and plotter to guide his work, but the final stereo pair images used to
print the phantograms are indeed drawn by hand.  They are quite amazing.

>to recall one was of a horse, another a nude) printed out on, I guess, some

At Green Bay in '99, the life-size nude was my work.  It is a photographic
phantogram, and I believe unique given its 1:1 scale and subject matter.
The print is three by seven feet in size, and is also the subject of an
amusing "dual format" self portrait stereo slide that can be previewed
(with or without anaglyph glasses) on my phantogram page:

http://www.starosta.com/3dshowcase/iphanto.html

The two phantogram ponies at Green Bay were photographed by Lynn Butler
with an S1 camera.  Prior to Green Bay I agreed to make the attempt to turn
the stereo pairs into phantograms using my digital methods.  I ended up
unhappy with the result because the possible 3d viewing geometries could
not be well-matched with the taking geometry (which was unknown, in any
case); nevertheless, those prints are apparently working well enough,
providing quite a bit of enjoyment to most people who see them.

I got started with the whole phantogram thing after a lively e-discussion
with "phantoboy" Springsteen, triggered by the publication of one of Bahr's
phantograms in fall/1998.  Two other people appear to be active in this
strange medium: Steve Aubrey of California, who makes amazing photographic
aerial cityscape phantograms, and a fellow whose name no one seems to know
(list members?), that was showing off his prints at Mesa this year.  He was
also claiming to have filed for a patent on this type of imagemaking - but
I only heard about him, and cannot speculate how he made his images.

Boris

- What is natural and what is beautiful are, in their purest state,
- indistinguishable.
-                                     - David Bayles & Ted Orland
-                                       from the book _Art & Fear_

Boris Starosta, big chief             boris@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Dynamic Symmetry, LLC                 http://www.starosta.com
usa - 804 979 3930                    http://www.starosta.com/3dshowcase

Currently showing at The Observatory. Info: ...3dshowcase/technobot.html