Many years ago I realized that taking a stereo photograph of a stationary object is as trivial as taking a picture, locking the settings, moving your camera a few inches to one side, and taking the same picture again. The first shots I took I used a tripod and a ruler laid against the front of it and it worked out fairly well. Unless you have a controlled environment, though, this is all really elaborate and burdensome. Some years later, I thought to myself, “How precise do I really need to be?” Turns out you can get a fairly decent 3D effect freehand. It’s pretty simple, actually. Stand squarely in front of your subject with your feet about two feet apart. Favor your left foot. Frame your shot and lock the settings, Take the pic. Shift your weight over to your right foot and take the shot again. Mission accomplished.

The very first color photograph was taken by a true polymath, James Clerk Maxwell. Maxwell’s work on electromagnetic theory paved the way for the theory of relativity. In his off time, he taught for free at the local community college, engineered bridges, and discovered additive color. His work on the perception of color led him at the ripe old age of 30 to create the world’s first permanent color photograph. Well, kind of permanent, anyways. His technique involved taking three pictures of the subject, each with a colored gel, red, green, and blue. To display it, one had use lamps to project colored light through the three monochrome transparencies. It was all pretty cumbersome.

1861: The world’s first color photograph – a tartan ribbon