Amazing 3D Photographs

Hibiscus, Malaysia's national flower.

If you are wondering what the hell the two identical pictures are doing there, you must have not watched a stereogram before. A stereogram is just that, a stereo - 3-dimensional, gram - picture or drawing.

At the first glance, of course there is nothing 3-dimensional about these two images. They are simply the same 2D pictures we see everywhere. But that's not the whole deal. Just try to cross your eyes and combine the two pictures into one... Then the magic appears! The combined picture literally jumps out of the screen, and you end up with a vivid 3-dimensional picture!

For me, stereogram-viewing is relatively easy as I can cross my eyes at will. However, as far as I know a lot of people can't do the same. If you have a problem with that, try to do this: extend your index finger, look at it at a distance, and then pull it back towards your nose as you track it with your eyes. Your eyes are now "crossed"! Then come the tricky part... Get the finger out of your vision without changing your eyes' position, then look at that stereograph, maintaining the eyes' position throughout the process. At this point, you should be able to see 3 pictures in your vision (instead of 2), and the centre one is the 3D combined picture that you are interested in. If they seem to be out of focus, try to relax your eyes, again while maintaining the position. Of couse all that is easier said than done.

Isn't that wonderful? There are hundreds more of stereographs which I found in this page. Have a nice bug-viewing day, but please don't overdo it as it may cause eye fatigue.


p/s: If you are interested in the mechanism behind stereogram, there is a lot to learn in its wikipedia article.