PICTORIAL STEREOGRAPHY 147on the leg skin clearly visible, in short all detail as clear as if the
bird were stuffed, yet the taxidermist does not live who could
impart that air of tenseness as the widespread wings are con-
trolled with exactitude, and the whole body just ready to land.
Nor is the color inferior to the other qualities of the slide. In
short it shows what has happened before our eyes time after time
yet which we have never been able to see because of the ineffi-
ciency of our vision.
Certainly that is a record shot, it has great value of scientific
nature, but despite that, there have been few photographic pic-
tures which could rival it in pure pictorial value1 In fact, recalling
the statement of the conventional pictorialist “Stereo is fit only
for record work” one is tempted to reply, “Perhaps, but in stereo
even the records can be superlative pictures.”
But life is too short for recrimination and quarrels. The fact is
indisputable that stereo offers quite as many pictorial opportuni-
ties as does planar photography; stereo offers several pictorial op-
portunities which are impossible to the planar photographer by
reason of the inherent limitations of his medium; stereo pictorial-
ism presents a challenge because its potentialities have not yet
begun to be explored; and because the stereo picture is appealing
to everyone inasmuch as it represents the realism of nature ex-
pressed by the individual stereographer instead of being a cold
artificiality appreciable only by those who have been schooled in
the complex theory of pictorial composition of a rapidly pass-
ing era.
DISTANCE LIMITATIONS.-The question of distance limitation
involves only personal preference and effectiveness, not any fixed
rules. It is true that the older stereo technique did try to impose
such limitations and there are even formulae which prove mathe-
matically the existence of limitations imposed by natural law. The
trouble with these “laws” is that they are transgressed daily by the
new stereographers who never heard of them, and the results are
quite satisfactory. A “law” which can be ignored without percepti-
ble result certainly has little authority!
We have a formula to tell the amount of separation between
objects which can be seen at various distances, and the formula
would be dependable if only human vision were uniform; but
the sad fact remains that no individual can predict what another