Stereograms are 3D images that have another dimension hidden within them. To unlock that dimension you need to trick your brain to either to make your eyes focus either beyond the image or before the image.
“Have you ever seen a stereogram?
The ‘Truth’ the Stereogram shows us is there in front of us. Training and work doesn’t make us see it. It’s a point of view, a different way of looking at it. When you see it you try to explain it to someone else and you realize you can’t. It simple, super simple, yet almost impossible to explain. There are ‘techniques’ to see them but some people may spend years trying without results. Others can do it in seconds. It doesn’t change the fact that the image is there all the time in front of us.
And it’s Beautiful.” ~ T.R. Cordón
How to See Stereograms?
When we usually look at anything, a picture, a cd or anything we focus on the object. This is how we have trained our eyes from the time we are born. Using this method we do not see the third dimension in Stereograms.
There are two methods where by we can see the hidden 3D images in sterograms.
One is the Parallel Method and the other is the Cross Eyed Method.
The Parallel Method:
Is also known as the divergence or Magic Eye method, the point of focus is moved beyound the image. Basically it is to look through the image and focus at a point beyound. The line of site is sort of parallel when approaching the image hence its named this. When you use this method the muscles inside your eye that control the focusing lens relax and lengthen.
The Cross-Eyed Method:
The Cross Viewing method, can be enabled by focusing your eyes at a point before the image in the middle of it. This way the line of sight from each of your eyes cross in front of the image. When you use this method the muscles inside your eye that control the focusing lens contract strongly and shorten.
A Couple of my Favorite Stereograms:
I have tried staring at a Stereogram for hours and never managed to see it. Until my friend Warrel actually took the trouble of teaching me to do it. The first Stereogram is the one below.
The first time I saw it, I was zapped stared at it for 5 minutes and kept on doing it. Looking at the world in 3D is so much fun.
Here are some more that I liked
Stereograms In India:
Stereograms with Aum symbols are available in India. These stereograms help in meditation, this kind of Meditation is knows as Pranava Yantra.
It seems if you look into the stereograms for 3 – 5 minutes everyday they can have many beneficial effects such as:
Relaxes your mind
Improves concentration
Balances emotions and reduce mental tension
Freedom from worries and anxiety
Cure headache, insomnia, high blood pressure, depression and other stress related problems.
About Stereograms:
Stereogram was discovered by Charles Wheatstone in 1838. He found an explanation of binocular vision which led him to construct a stereoscope based on a combination of prisms and mirrors to allow a person to see 3D images from two 2D pictures.
Stereograms were re-popularized by the creation of autostereogram on computers, where an 3D image is hidden in a single 2D image, until the viewer focuses the eyes correctly. The Magic Eye series is a popular example of this. Magic Eye books refer to autostereograms as stereograms, leading most people to believe that the word stereogram is synonymous to autostereogram.
Salvador Dalí created some impressive stereograms in his exploration in a variety of optical illusions.
Resources
Wonderful collection of Optical Illusions! (Must See)
Source of Methods to View Stereograms
