A blip meet going 3D

Before meeting up with our friend John Daniell, I had to drive up to the Stancombe Beech Farm shop in Bisley a few miles away up on the Cotswold plateau. It was pouring with welcome rain, although the strong gusts of wind weren't quite so pleasant.

I arrived outside JohnD.'s home, just down the hill from us, to find that DailyKeith had got there on time too. He'd contacted me this morning on the off chance of meeting for a drink at our favourite hostelry, the Crown and Sceptre. I had in fact arranged to go there at lunchtime with John D.. I'd thought that Keith would be very interested in some of the photographic equipment which John uses and to hear about the project we were going to discuss, relating to the exhibition the Preservation Trust will present in the autumn.

I also wanted to talk to John D. about arranging to meet up with John W., who I blipped HERE. They have mutual interests in microscopes, photography and stereoscopic images. John D. showed me the small scale prints of an exhibition he had curated and mounted about the history and then demise of the River Severn railway bridge, near Sharpness, which was destroyed in an accident in 1960. These prints will be useful to demonstrate ways of presenting the Trust's own history, using similar forms of material such as maps, photos, articles, architectural drawings and anecdotes.

I then asked him to show Keith his stereoscopic camera and the viewing system for one type of 3D experience. The camera itself would have been a fine blip to show you blippers, as not many will have ever seen a camera with two lens in one body, mounted side by side. Unfortunately that must wait as I like this picture of Keith looking through the viewfinder at John's two mounted photos of Clevedon Pier on the Severn Estuary, which form a 3D image, taken from a paddle-steamer boat as it left the pier a few years ago. John D. is looking on inimitably.

It is so interesting to see views (he showed us many more of the hundreds he has shot) of landscapes, particularly of Uley Bury, all in three dimensions, particularly having seen John W.'s 3D images on his laptop two days ago.

We then set off for the pub and on the way up the hill, we bumped into John W. who had got my message and was able to join us for a comprehensive discussion of all things microscopic and 3D. We are going over to his house soon to have another look at the various images already produced, (some of them of the Trust's Brunel Goods Shed, which are part of the archive record I had commissioned from them both. and others).