My background started in television as a motorsports camera operator, then video editor, worked my way into television commercials because I liked doing the effects. Skipped through various tape suites then Avid, then Henry and Inferno for more complex stuff. Despite the price tag, I figured those systems had stagnated. So I started learning modeling and animation, I didn't get far before stumbling across a PC compositing application called Shake (think photoshop for moving pictures). I focused my efforts on that for a few years, clocking up a few feature film credits.

I supervised some vfx for a movie, then decided I wanted another challenge and a bit of time out bush. I've owned a stereo microscope for about 10 years and have always been blown away by what there is to see down there on the macro scale, particularly in stereo. I've got a B&W lab, but I started moving away from film when I began to do a lot of flash photography. A friend made an intervalometer for my first DSLR so I could shoot timelapse footage, the D70 died fairly quickly. Regardless, I concocted a plan to use my skills with digital image manipulation to see if I could shoot timelapse and stuff in 3D, using the heavier duty D2x cameras.

I bought every Viewmaster reel I could find, a few hundred, and was particularly inspired by the work of Pat Whitehouse, who presented her stereo nature photography to audiences across the globe. There is a heaven full of astounding nature about the place and I'm particularly excited by how stereo imagery can show it in a new light.

3 years later I'm a little bit more knowledgeable and infinitely certain that stereoscopic cinema, gaming, & television is going to go off like a box of crackers over the next 10 years.

My own little show about the Flinders Ranges in South Australia, has now had a public run in Adelaide which went down pretty well and I've been invited to present it at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

The film industry in Australia is a little timid when it comes to embracing this, so I'm still on my lonesome. My reason for pressing on is pretty simple: Nature would have to be pretty silly to go to the trouble of granting us binocular vision and the wetware for stereopsis if it is a waste of time — 3D vision is integral to the way we experience our immediate environment, nature sure isn't silly.

Mainstream visual media takes us beyond our immediate environment, at least one of our eyes, it is time to make it two.

Audience reactions confirm that we now have the appropriate tools to make it work, though the next few years are going to be critical with regard to winning over an already skeptical public who have been burnt by the failed attempts at 3D cinema in the past.

Tim Baier

Freelance Stereographer

Australia