William Hetzer stereoviews join the Commons

Published by Paula Bray on November 13, 2009 3 Comments

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This week we have added another small collection of photos to the Commons on Flickr and this is one of twelve stereoviews that we are now making available for you to see and use. This original was created by William Hetzer and was published in one of the earlier sets of William Hetzer’s stereoviews, This image is especially relevant to the Powerhouse Museum collections as it is the earliest photographic record of Australia’s first Locomotive. Appropriately named Locomotive No. 1, this train is now part of the Powerhouse Collection. This locomotive arrived in Sydney in February 1855 and worked on the NSW rail lines until March 1877 when it was withdrawn from operation after having travelled more than 250,000 kms.

Flickr member Thiophene_Guy has already made an animated gif of this image and describes this as:

The purpose here is not to duplicate the original image, from the Powerhouse Museum collection but to generate an animated gif to assist viewing.

See the gif here

Stereoview by William Hetzer
No known copyright restrictions

  • http://lifeasdaddy.typepad.com/lifeasdaddy/ Bob Meade

    I don’t know much about stereoviews.

    The animated gif is very interesting, and the man standing in the foreground appears realtively still while almost every other part of the photograph moves a good deal in the animation.

    What creates the effect of the man standing still?

    Is it because he is in the precise intersection of where the two slightly apart camera positions have crossed their line of sight?

    Is it perhaps because he has been inserted into the image in what we now call post-production to create a certain stereo effect?

    I would be interested to see if some other similar animations have a similar object or person remaining still in the photograph.

  • beachcomberaustralia

    Bob, I think your first premise is right for this stereoview. The Thin Controller (Sir Topham Hatt’s grandfather) happens to be at the focal point of the two camera lenses. Some of the other gifs in Theophene_Guy’s very interesting photostream are more successful. As always, beware of geeks bearing gifs!

    Helpful article about stereoscopy here – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscopy . Evidently you can train your brain to look at these images cross-eyed.

  • http://lifeasdaddy.typepad.com/lifeasdaddy/ Bob Meade

    Thank you beachcomberaustralia.

    I could not get the other gifs on flickr to work before I wrote the above. I’ll go back there and have another look. Good wikipedia link, now I know it all.