In the early 90's, there was a revival in 3D with the release of the popular Magic Eye books, and as it turned out, I had very little difficulty seeing the 3D images as I'd been merging patterns on wallpapers and other things since I was a kid.

And this led, strangely enough, to my interest in 3D photography.

A friend had invited me to stay with her and another friend in Tathra, NSW. She had a beautiful property nestled in the forest, and I really wanted to take a panorama of the area, so decided to snap and turn, snap and turn. My camera was not sophisticated, a simple pocket camera which used 110 film.

But once I got the photos back, I realised that the edges matched up, when I put one photo on top of the other, so I did the trick with my eyes and was amazed when I saw that I'd accidentally taken (bits of) a 3D photo, and the bits looked great.

I was online back then and so I decided to search for 3D cameras, who knows, maybe there's a way to take proper 3D photos.

Well the first place I found was Dr. Theos Website, This fella specialises in 3D and has all kinds of cameras, right up to Twin-SLRs which had been cleverly melded together so that you could take two shots with the press of a single button.

Dr Theo was kind enough to introduce me to the Realist, a 50s camera which he'd lovingly restore and then sell to people via his website. He decided to send me a set of slides and a small plastic viewer, which looked something like a pair of opera binoculars.

When I received the parcel, I couldn't wait to see what the pictures looked like. They were standard 35mm slides, although cut slightly narrower, and mounted in a special card frame - one slide for each eye.

When I looked at them in the viewer, they were amazing. There was one of a tasteful nude in the garden, an art piece, it looked so real that you could have been looking at a real woman through binoculars, hrmmm, perhaps not so tasteful after all. And everyone I showed the pictures to was blown away and loved looking at these amazing slides.

Yes I got a camera, pretty quickl;, I had one about two weeks later and began snapping pictures of my family.

The camera is a twin lens job, it has to be, to take a photo for each eye at the same time, was not automatic, had no light meter (and neither did I so I guessed a lot, no I never bought one, a lot of pictures were under-exposed) It did have a rangefinder, an unusual thing to use. I'd look at a tree and the trunk would seem as though it was split horizontally, but adjusting the dial would make it look normal.

This needed to be done with all your subjects before shooting, It reminded me of the movie "The dam busters"  where the planes used spotlights to work out how high they were over the water.

Once I got the slides back, they were uncut, and in a roll - I usually had to tell the photo shop twice the film should not be cut, and even then I'd get a phone call questioning me about my strange film which wasn't quite the same format as everybody else's.

Then I had to cut and mount the slides myself.

Now, if there was a mistake, that I set the slides in the wrong side of the frame, I'd get a very strange error. Everything that should be in the foreground would be in the background and vice-versa. So a picture of a person standing in front of a wall, would become a human shaped hole in a wall, it's a very weird and wonderful effect.

Eventually, after a lot of fiddly work, I'd end up with my own slides, and some of them were absolutely beautiful; in one of my favourites, taken in Gisbourne in Victoria, my parents and dog (Benny, an Alaskan Malamute) stand together on a footpath which slopes downwards into the distance, and you really do get a sense of depth that you just can't get with what the 3D fans sneeringly call "flatties".

And now I'm mostly digital, because that's the way the world has gone. and although taking photos has become much, much easier, I do miss the beauty of 3D. 

I had thought that 3D was a gimmick, but compare a flat picture of a pond with fish in it to a 3D one.and you see the surface of the water, the fish swimming further down, the plants and then the bottom of the pond. You can see it all and it's absolutely stunning.

My family has all since passed on, but I am sincerely glad that I have this wonderful photographic record of them, and I'd definitely urge others to try this format for themselves, but quickly, as film is getting harder and harder to obtain