This is a website built with the specific purpose of displaying the stereo photos Mathew Potter and Stephen Ford have taken of Cardiff. At present all photographs have been taken with a 35mm film (not digital) based Loreo camera, a fantastic little snapshot camera which using a splitting technique in the lens to imitate the left and right human eyes. Although a good camera it is limited in that the lenses are always the same distance apart and are stuck in parallel. We are hoping to experiment in future with more bespoke setups that may allow things like close ups and different focal lengths. This project has been great fun and slowly we have accumulated many reels of films with over 200 pictures taken so far (only the best are displayed on the website). Part of the fun was making the red cyan glasses that may have brought you to this website, we found the mass produced red cyan glasses lacking with far to much ghosting, with specifically chosen light filters we honed our glasses to create the least amount of ghosting we could manage giving a much more powerful sense of depth. We have tried to display the pictures in as many formats as we can but there are some formats that simply are not possible to display on a normal computer monitor or through a webpage. Most notably the passive 3d method used in cinemas is not possible although if anyone knows of a standard or method that allows any format not on this site please contact us and we will look into it.
Hi I’m Matt Potter a Strange individual brought up in the suburbs of Cardiff, where I was able to horse ride to escape an often scary new world. Many weekends of my formative years were spent in the industrial maritime museum where a lasting fascination for engineering began. Unfortunately the museum was knocked down (and moved to Swansea as the National Waterfront Museum) to make wake for the redevelopment of Cardiff bay. Now the Mermaid quay now stands in its place. A lot of time was also spent in St Fagans the museum of welsh life learning about the past and exploring every inch of the buildings and its surroundings. My ongoing interests of history and engineering collided when I discovered a Victorian Stereoscopic slide. Since then much research has taken place and many Stereoscopic photos taken. I also enjoy a good whisky, playing ukulele, wingback chairs and cooking in strange places. During the warmer months I can often be spotted on a Penny Farthing peddling through Cardiff and beyond.
Hello I am Stephen Ford, creator of the website and taker of photographs. A trained animator I am a graduate of the University of Wales Newport and am currently working as a tech support engineer in a large company. Some people would be quite baffled that an animator would be interested in what is at the moment obscure photography but the leap is not as large as it seams. Multimedia training put me in a great position to build this website and the technical aspects of animation put me in great stead to automate the preparation of the photos for multiple formats and even the banner and buttons of the site are created in 3D software I usually use for animation. Saying this I have learned an enormous amount doing this website especially exploring the new compositional challenges of an extra dimension. I was born a Cardiffian and it has been fascinating and emotional watching this once small capital city grow into the large and ever-growing internationally recognised city it is today. Over half of what we have photographed simply did not exist when I was in high school and half more again since junior school. It is nice to see deserving buildings and parks like the Pier-Head building and the Taff Trail survive the unrelenting progress for future generations to enjoy as well. Being in a big city has its benefits and the volume of content we had to photograph was huge. If you have any questions for me or about this site please contact me via the contact page.