Portland D

3D Center of Art and Photography
Saturday, January 7
Last night, for the second time in a few weeks, I left behind an umbrella. Not that I usually need one. Most days it doesn't rain hard enough to even bother opening it up. Still, it's good to have one on hand for days like today when it has been raining steadily. Fortunately, today's expedition is a scant three blocks away, close enough to not have to get into the car or worry about getting too wet.

The 3D Center of Art & Photography is the only one of its kind in the country. It seems like one of those places that enthusiasts might travel to from far off places, yet I wouldn't be surprised if most people in the neighborhood didn't know of its existence. I read about it last month in the Northwest Examiner, my monthly community newspaper, and after lunch, I took a leisurely stroll over there to check it out. It was thrilling.

I'd never paid much attention to 3D art and I absolutely hated those Magic Eye things that were such a craze in the 90s (I could never get the effect.) I never knew there were so many kinds of 3D. Annie, the 20-something woman on staff at the center took me around on a guided tour, pointing out the various ways of creating the effects, the cameras, the viewing equipment (including one invented by Oliver Wendell Holmes in the 1800s.) She showed me the double-lens stereoscopic cameras that took nearly identical pictures from a parallel viewpoint. I looked through the viewfinder and was enthralled by the photos of the Columbia River Gorge and Portland's Japanese Garden. I've never seen anything like it. It looked...well, so real. With other forms of 3D and using the traditional glasses we've all seen before, I looked at photos in which parts of the image seemed to pop out of the frame. Then, on a television screen, there is a flicking image. Put on yet another pair of glasses and the scene is transformed into 3D. Annie explained the glasses also flicker at a similar frequency to create the effect. Or something like that. I had a hard time keeping up with all the details. The 3D viewfinder that you might remember as a child was invented and produced in Portland and the Post Office offered the first 3D postmark here a few years back.

More people came in and we all watched a stereoscopic slide show from the 1930s which was just as fascinating for the history of the creator as for the dramatic views from the mountains of Wales. I guess I appeared so interested in it all that Annie said I should come back next Saturday morning when the Cascade Stereoscopic Club meets. She said they usually have doughnuts.