Anaglyphs
An anaglyph is a picture that appears to be three dimensional when viewed through special glasses. Specifically, anaglyphs are designed to be viewed through glasses that have a red filter in front of your left eye and a blue or cyan filter in front of your right eye. When viewed without glasses, these pictures will have blue and red "ghost" images mixed together, and hence do not appear clearly. Once you put on a pair of anaglyph glasses, the picture will immediately take on a clear, 3D appearance, although the picture will generally lose the original scene's color brilliance. The picture takes on a more subdued color scheme, trending more toward a grayscale image.
Anaglyph glasses can be obtained in varying qualities ranging from high quality glass lenses in regular eyeglass frames (best quality viewing) to the common cardboard glasses with what appears to be cellophane lenses. They all work for viewing pictures. If you don't have any and can't find them, let me know and I can mail you a pair of the cardboard variety.
All images listed below are anaglyphs, some of which are much better than others. Check them out and enjoy them by clicking on any link below. When you have finished looking at a picture, click the "back" button on your browser to return to this page to select another picture to view. Feel free to save any to your hard drive for off line viewing if you wish. All images are copyrighted by me, Jay Altman, so please don't use them on your own website or distribute them in any other way without my permission.
Terri by Front Deck A picture of Terri standing in the path she cleared through the snow to our front porch, looking from the garage. The picture was taken 12/20/2009 around Noon.
Marc and his truck in snow A picture of Marc by his truck after clearing a path around it through the snow. The snow was about 24 inches deep with drifts much higher than that on this Sunday, December 20, 2009. He is standing in the bed of his truck about Noon.
Icy Branches A picture of accumulated sleet and freezing rain on pine branches next to our driveway. Good 3D in this one.
Icy Truck in Driveway A picture of accumulated sleet and freezing rain on our son's truck in our driveway on January 28, 2009.
Icy Truck closeup Same truck, but closer up view. The truck was actually encased in ice.
St. Francis in the Snow A picture of St. Francis in front of our house. The statue is barely visible when looking at the picture without the anaglyph glasses, but he really jumps out with the glasses.
Driveway Snow Terri and our son Marc clearing a path from the garage to the front deck through 10" to 12" of snow around mid day, Monday, March 2nd. This is a good anaglyph optimized to actually show some color, and may be zoomed into to look at details. The latest versions of Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox allow you to click on an area of the image to zoom into.
Table and Chair with lots of snow A picture of accumulated snow (almost 12") on the patio table and a chair on our back deck. Notice how the snow has accumulated on the arm of the chair and the framing in its back. The cushion has been remoevd and stored away for winter safekeeping, resulting in the neat snow build-up. I took this picture from inside through the sliding glass door to our back deck, resulting in some reflections in the upper right area of the picture, making it a little harder to focus on in that area. I'll pay more attention in the future.
Marc and Guitar Marc with his guitar. I shot this picture with two Canon digital cameras simultaneously. I did not get the shutters perfectly synchronized, so there is a bit of movement in some areas, resulting in a not-just-right picture, but I think you will enjoy it anyway. It looks like you could reach out and touch him. I'll make a better one later.
Marc in the air This picture was made by scanning a stereo slide (both left and right slide images) and combining the two images into an anaglyph. The original image was taken with a Revere stereo camera made in the 1950's.
Jay and Jamey in NC Mountains This anaglyph was also made by scanning an old stereo slide taken by my mother in 1970 with her Kodak stereo camera. The original slide was heavily over-exposed and washed out, but with some adjustment during the scanning process, I was able to "rescue" a reasonable picture. I am carrying my son Jamey, who was 17 months old at the time, and his mother is following behind us. My father is ahead of me in the direction I am facing, almost hidden among the branches of the hibernating trees. It was March, 1970, and the trees had no leaves yet since it was still winter. Two of my younger brothers are in the ravine ahead of us, which is off to my left in the picture.
Terri with Cleveland Robert and Jamey with Cleveland Robert These two pictures were taken with a Nimslo stereo camera, briefly made during the early 1980's. It is a special camera with four lenses instead of two made to take pictures that can be printed as lenticular prints. Lenticular prints can be viewed in stereo with no visual aids such as anaglyph glasses or a lorgnette, but only in hard copy form. A lenticular can not be digital for viewing on a computer screen. I scanned two of the four negatives for each image to make these anaglyph pictures. Unfortunately, I had the flash set too high and the people in the pictures are a little washed out from over exposure. That is particularly true of the one with Jamey and Cleveland Robert since I got closer to them for that picture resulting in even more flash illumination. The pictures are still quite usable despite the too-hot flash. I'll do better next time. Now that I know how to use my film scanner better, I can probably do a better job of compensating for the overexposure and I may be able to get better images that way, too.
This web page was last updated on Monday, December 21, 2009.