OK, So the earth ain't flat and the moon isn't made of green cheese and there are those terrible rumors that Santa Claus does not live at the North Pole!

This entire thread reminds me of the old shaggy dog story from back in my high school days. It was about a Madison Avenue advertising executive who gives up his lucrative career to travel the word and discover the real "meaning of life" ! The story goes on for hours about all his trials and tribulation. At the end of the adventure, near death, emaciated and struggling for breath, our hero is found clinging to the rim of an ice encrusted crevice atop the Himalayas where a great sage, guru and philosopher is said to reside and harbors the truth and the ultimate wisdom about the real meaning of life. He peers into the abyss and there stands a little old man with a long white beard. He begs the little man for the answer. The old fellow has enormous black eyes and and barely audible and cracking voice and exclaims "LIFE IS A BLACK BUTTERFLY"! Our hero is taken aback and goes into a long diatribe on how he gave up everything and sacrificed all just to receive this seeming absurd and inane reply. The old fella looks up sheepishly and says, SO IT ISN'T!

I hope that by now you will have seen Uuglyper's gracious apology and admission that he had the images reversed. The anaglyph evidence I sent him was what proved it. He acknowledges that, In the interest of full disclosure, the image reversal was noted by the perennial critic mentioned in my first post above. I express gratitude to Norman A. Elmslie (“Scotty” /selmslie) for his sharp eye. ... thanks to Scotty for pointing out my mistake.

In fact, all of the image pairs in all of the 2D-3D conversions for the past two years have been reversed. The challenge has been that the small pairs are so hard to see that even he could not keep his eyes crossed long enough to discover the problem. Nevertheless, in all but a handful of the images, this did not matter since the anaglyph versions show that the 3D effect does not work properly either way you switch the left-right pairs.

I'm sure that he appreciates your vigorous defense of his work but now you have it from his own mouth.

Maybe you can now be as honest as he was in recognizing that what I have been saying does not constitute a "vendetta" but rather a technical disagreement over the facts,

I would not have commented but since dsmeltz said something, I will too.

Another poster told me that, "... your ideas about free speech are quite different from mine."

In For Your Consideration everyone is constrained by the rules and the monitors to conform. Posters are afraid to speak frankly or straightforwardly - not to fully express their honest opinions. Their posts seem to be a bit mealy-mouthed.

Here in the Main Photography Discussion there are no such restrictions or enforcement against any but the most egregious language and behavior. There is more freedom of speech. That includes the freedom to offer dissenting opinions, lie about facts and get called out for it, argue as long as you wish, repeat yourself and even make yourself look foolish.

Readers are free to Unwatch what they consider to be a "toxic" topic that they feel has turned into a train wreck. Or they may decide to lower themselves by joining the fray or by complaining about it. That's what freedom of speech is all about.

It reminds me of a Jerry Seinfeld routine where a woman in the audience said she was there to celebrate her birthday. His remark was (paraphrasing), "Oh really, which one?" Apparently no answer so he said, "I get it. You want attention - just not too much attention."

This post that took it to your 20. Which was posted by ... oh,... posted by you. That is one way to make a prior statement true.

I know there is an interesting and amusing joke in here, somewhere having to do with truth, alternative facts and the new American way in force since January 2017, but it is still too early in the morning for me to come up with it. And I really did want to word it in a humorous non-offensive way, because I really do not think you did it intentionally.

This thread has gone on now for 7 pages and might reach 10 pages, all because one member said we should do something on our own. I think the OP is forgetting that every single one of us has different reasons for clicking the shutter in the first place. Even at that we all may differ in our views depending on the subject matter. When I photograph my granddaughters I basically want a record shot of them on say, a merry go round, dressed up to go somewhere, a school recital and so on. Of course I try to take the best photo I can but I don’t have the desire to view them as models, getting a shot for publication in a magazine. I just want photos of family. When I am at the Grand Canyon or Bryce then I will probably have a tripod and of course will look for the best view DEPENDING on weather, crowds, time of day and time allotted for that area.

Then again, each of us has different expectations in our photography. I once was the manager of a photo department in a drugstore. People would often show me their prints when they picked them up so I could ooh and aah along with them. Some were truly spectacular, some were simply snapshots of family, tourist attractions, animals to put in the freezer, etc. I will always remember two sisters in their mid 80’s who used a 110 camera to take photos of a litter of kittens from their cat. They were so excited at getting the photos to begin with so when they brought the cartridge in for processing I was as excited as they were to see the results. A week later when they showed me the prints, they were as excited as if they were 10 years old. They absolutely loved the photos. Then they handed them to me for my perusal. The prints showed six tiny black dots of the mom and kittens taken from across the kitchen. Had I not known they were cats, I might have had no idea what they were. But my point is, to those two elderly ladies, the photos were their life, their happiness.

We see hundreds of photos submitted by members every day. Some are beautiful, worthy of publication. Some are nicely done but nothing spectacular, snapshots. And some are as bad as the cat photos I mentioned. But those photos might be the best our member photographers can do at the time and possibly will ever do. But they are happy with those photos.

Honestly I do not think we need someone telling us to take better photos from a different place or time. I think we all know there are other specific points to stand, different time of day etc. from where we can take photos. I am happy with my photos or know where I want to improve. Has the OP submitted any of HIS photos yet for our perusal?

Dennis

Look, Scotty, a new playmate in your sandbox (soapbox?)!

While you are educating people about the physics, please don't neglect the conversations about lens compression with telephoto or the properties of an ultra-wide angle lens re distortion. For people who actually take pictures, those are the creative aspects of focal length and lens choices.