Behold the Red-Nosed Reindog, a rare creature from a remote mountain region near the North Pole! Okay, what you are actually looking at is a surreal photorealistic composite, which I created for the amusement of friends and family as this years Christmas card. I thought it would be fun to portray my daughter as an elf, and her dog as the iconic Rudolph. Being fairly adept at Photoshop magic, I combined a number of photographs to illustrate this imaginary scene.READ AND SEE MORE...

I am often asked about my technique for creating the 3-D pictures on this site. This is a complex subject about which entire books have been written; however, here are the basics of the methods that I personally use.

All the images portrayed were captured by a Nikon Stereo Rig or the Nimslo 3D camera using film such as Kodachrome. I never perform any kind of "2D to 3D conversion" from a normal photograph because it lacks the presence and power of real stereo photography. While sounding exotic, the Nikon Stereo Rig is actually a conventional Nikon camera mounted on a sliding rail to allow horizontal movement. This method requires a tripod and a subject that does not move during photography. One shot is fired, the camera is racked over horizontally the appropriate distance for eye separation, then another shot is fired. All camera settings must be set manually to ensure consistency of exposure and focus resulting in two slides, one for each eye, known as a "stereo pair". For moving subjects such as people, I typically use the Nimslo, an unusual camera from the eighties that shoots four photos at once. The Nimslo's four lenses were originally designed to produce lenticular prints, but only the two outer pictures are utilized for classical stereo. The slides produced from these cameras can be viewed with special 3-D viewers or even projected in stereo with the right equipment.READ AND SEE MORE...