Flying the Santa Ynez Valley is always interesting and fun, but often remarkably beautiful too. That was the case on this February flight, when we saw some effects from a welcome return of near-normal rain to our region. After the horrors of our monstrous Thomas Fire and subsequent debris flow, it was reassuring to see a light tinge of green on the barren mountains around Jameson Lake.
9311 Jameson Hinting Green
Beyond the full lake and burnt mountains far into the eastern distance, snow on the farthest peaks filled our hearts with hope of a gentler 2019 Summer. To the North, unburned slopes just beyond the Santa Ynez River valley weren’t so far away.
9346 Blued Green Beyond Brown
The different sun angle on moist air made those green slopes look more blue to the camera than to our refreshed eyes. We wondered how much of that still mostly bare foreground slope would erode down into the river valley lakes. Nearing the airport and town of Santa Ynez, the Bradbury Dam on Lake Cachuma was releasing a token amount of precious water to nourish the ground water and the river habitat.
9348 Bradbury Water Release
Last up for this small selection of pix from that flight, I’ll offer a touch of how those distant snowy peaks looked to us. Unlike these flat two-dimensional camera pix, most people see in 3D. Even so, many people have trouble seeing 3D on a 2D medium like a standard tablet or computer screen. When I was a kid we once had a Viewmaster that made it easier. Recently we splurged on a few pair of $20 DLP Link 3D glasses for our inexpensive used Optoma projector to watch a few BluRay 3D movies on the 93″ screen. Anyway, that stimulated me to make up this 3D image of the snowy peaks.
0231 Deeper Peek at Peaks
Now since few people will have a Viewmaster or 3D projector, I’ve made this image for the “crossview” type of “free viewing” that only requires learning the trick. If you’ve followed this blog, my Photo Page, or Edhat posts for long, you’ve seen me share some 3D over the years. Many people have enjoyed them, and many others have been unable to master the trick. I recently came across an excellent Iowa State University crossview tutorial that might help. As always, feel free to use our Contact Us form to share your success (or frustration), or to let us know if you’d like me to share one of the 3D pix I’m creating for display using our new DLP Link 3D glasses. They’ll work on Optoma or any of the many compatible projectors (possibly not compatible with the much more expensive DLP Link TVs).
ps-Anne’s computer didn’t display the two most helpful “animated GIF” files in that ISU tutorial, so here they are in the hope you can see them here if not on that site.
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What you perceive might be something like the animation below.
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Since you learned distance control in step 1, align your four squares so that the two in the middle overlap. The “X” will help you do this with precision. What you perceive might be something like the animation below.
John & Anne Wiley 
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