Seeing double? Ethel Davies’ 3D images

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By taking similar but non-identical images, Ethel Davies creates the illusion of three-dimensionality in her photographs, as Karen Hasin Bromley explains

For more than 30 years Ethel Davies has been a London-based photographer.  An American from California, she arrived in the UK in 1974 and became a travel photographer on the  completion of a four-year course in professional photography. Although practised in the professional and commercial side of photography, she developed a keen interest in computer-aided imagery and completed an MA in Digital Art. She has lived on a narrow boat in the Regents Canal for the past seven years  and  it was her photographic images of the canal, submitted for her MA, that led to an exhibition at the Canal Museum in Kings Cross  in 2012.  What set these images apart and made them exceptional and distinctive was that they were produced in 3D.   Viewed through red/cyan glasses, the images leap off the wall and appear to be in the room with you.  The publicity generated from the King’s Cross show led to an exhibition of her 3D photographs at the Tapestry Gallery in London’s West End in March 2013. This exhibition included photographs shot in the UK and abroad.

The expertise required to produce this type of photograph is considerable.  Originally 3D photographs were viewed stereoscopically where two photographs placed side by side were viewed as one, through a pair of ‘lorgnettes’. Three-dimensional views are achieved by means of a slight misalignment of the eyes – one eye sees one image and the other eye another and the parallax between them creates the illusion. For anaglyphs, the 3D effect is accomplished by persuading each eye to see different images, although only one composite is apparently seen. Different mechanisms are used to achieve this.  Colour separation is the one that Davies has perfected, whereby in one of the images all the red is removed so only the green and cyan is seen and in the other, all  the green and cyan are removed so only the red is visible. When viewed through opposite   ‘colour-coded’ ‘anaglyph glasses’, each of the two images reaches a different eye, creating an integrated stereoscopic image. The brain then fuses these into a three-dimensional picture. Davies does not use a special camera. Her photographs are made up of two separate, offset shots. The skill and expertise is in visualizing how each eye will see each shot and how the two shots will combine.

As a photographer Davies has contributed to a number of photo libraries and is represented in a number of others. She has another exhibition in the planning. With more than 8,000 photographs on line, there are lots more to be uploaded and she is still shooting. Her photographs can be accessed on line at www.3dphotolibrary.com