Instantly beautiful

I read somewhere that the Mayas (yes, the same ones who ran out of rope for their calendar) had a peculiar sense of beauty. They believed that flat foreheads and crossed eyes are symbols of beauty, so they would tie flat boards around their babies' foreheads to flatten their skulls and hang a bead between their eyes to make them cross-eyed.

Well, if you're able to read this blog, you're already too hard-headed to flatten your skull. But you can still be instantly beautiful if you cross your eyes. And you can view stereo photo pairs while you're at it. *grins*

I discovered stereoscopy in Flickr while doing a search for "3D", actually hoping to find photos from other virtual worlds besides Second Life®. I didn't find what I was looking for.  Instead, I stumbled upon Sascha Becher's stream, particularly this photo. And I've been hooked since.

After doing a lot of research on stereoscopy and creating stereo images, I created my first stereo pair, which was also my holiday greetings card for 2009, and I received many encouraging comments about it and subsequent works.

Through one of Sascha's notes, I discovered Stereomasken by Bernd Paksa, and a whole new creative world opened for me. I had so much fun with stereo framing and I still do. After a few prods from Sascha for a video tutorial on Stereomasken during a span of ten months, I finally found the time to start creating them. And you'll find them in YouTube and in my website.

I used to document my process in Flickr as well, but it is difficult to find that information there, so I'm slowly transferring them to the Cross-Eyed Beauties website.

Meanwhile, I hope to create short clips and such about my process in this blog as I create more stereo works. And then I'll compress them into tutorials in the main website.