About the name

They say that the Mayas had a particular taste in beauty -- flat foreheads and crossed eyes.  So they tied boards over their babies' heads to flatten the skull before it gets hard, and they hung a bead between the baby's eyes to make them cross-eyed, supposedly because being cross-eyed gave them better peripheral vision.

The name "Cross-Eyed Beauties" is actually a pun.  My Second Life® avatar, which is the main subject of my stereoscopy images, is not really cross-eyed, although she is a beauty.  The "Beauties" in the name actually refers to the photos themselves, and the "Cross-Eyed" is the technique used to view them in stereo.  But with the photo on the right, where my avatar *is* cross-eyed, the name becomes a double entendre.

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About Opal / Lea / Eleanor

Opal Lei is a Second Life persona, created and animated by the real-life Eleanor (Lea) Tesoro, who is a techie, writer, artist, businesswoman, and much more... all rolled into one.

For more information:

• Opal's CV
• Lea Tesoro author site
  
• Eleanor's CV
  

How I got started

It was a stereo pair created by Sascha Becher in Flickr that got me hooked.  I don't even remember how I found it, just that I was browsing through people's photos in Flickr.  I read everything I could find out about stereoscopy techniques from the masters in Flickr, then I followed the links they pointed to.

Sascha's framing fascinated me and I saw how a good frame improves the illusion of depth.  So I played with stereo-framing using Bernd Paksa's Stereomasken and received wonderful feedback from the stereo community in Flickr.

As I continued to do more stereo images, I've improved on my process and tried new things with framing to a point where the frame itself becomes a more tangible part of the art.