About Color Stereo Color Stereo Directory  

When I first began making stereograms in 1996 the Internet was the furthest thing from my mind. Two years later, I got connected. With low expectations, I typed "stereograms" into a search engine for the first time and was amazed how much came up. At that point, my stereograms weren't bad, and I was tempted to put up my own site.

I was finally able to get a cable connection that came with 10Mb of server space.  I developed some basic Web design skills and posted the first version of what I called, Color Stereo. To my astonishment, I got so much traffic it rapidly used up the meager bandwidth allowed by the ISP. So in 1998 I took the big plunge and took out my own domain.

Meanwhile, I'd come up with a technique for adding a volumetric look to the paper cutout appearance common to wallpaper type stereograms. This prompted me to add a second set of galleries which I called Second SIRDS, and I called the first galleries: Color Stereo 1. Later, I added the Third Eye galleries when I began integrating stereo-photographic elements into my images. Then an anaglyph gallery. I kept adding additional  galleries until it got too much to manage, so I didn't.

Ultimately, I redid the site. My Web design skills are far better than when I first began, but still kind of basic. Basic works out fine because in my wish to reach as many viewers with as many different platform, connection speeds, monitor sizes, and screen resolutions as possible basic is better than complicated multimedia pages. Anyhow, who needs fancy multimedia when stereogram viewers get innate 3D . . .

Today's Color Stereo is much cleaner and organized. There are far fewer images, but still plenty, easier to get to, and higher quality. As a result of unauthorized use and piracy I now make my signature lines more prominent than I'd like to on my digital images.  The signature lines to not exist on my published works.

Largely as a result of the Color Stereo site, I now have a career as a dedicated stereogram creator. I am mostly published in Japanese markets, but there are also several books available in the US as well as Europe and Asia. As a result of keeping up with custom jobs and publications I no longer have time to update the site as I would wish.

Despite the remarkable amount of visitors from all over the world, people still usually give blank stares when I mention stereograms. My mission is twofold: use this site to inform the public about stereograms, and take stereograms from a visual curiosity into acceptance as a New Age art form. I'm not saying that many of my stereograms are art, but that is the direction I wish to head. Last but not least, I wish to bring some pleasure to my visitors.

Gene             

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