I know I am the last person on earth to figure this out, but somebody has got to tell me: how did they pull off this photo?
I will gladly admit that I have no ability to decipher things like this. I suck at puzzles. I can't figure out the most basic magic tricks. I can't even see the 3-D effect when looking at one of those Magic Eye images.
This card is a 1993 Upper Deck card of Mike Perez, holding a 1993 Upper Deck card of Mike Perez, which features Mike Perez, holding a 1993 Upper Deck card of Mike Perez, and so on, and so on, and so on. It's been featured on the blogs several times. Most recently it was on Dinged Corners. And someone was nice enough on that post to reveal the name for the phenomenon shown on the card. It's called lenticular something or other. I think. Maybe I screwed that up. I just tried searching for the post and couldn't find it.
But the name isn't that important to me. What is important to me is the question I ask after every magic trick. How the hell did they do that? Someone please tell idiot boy. He just wants to learn.
There have been a number of other cards over the years in which I have been stumped by what I saw in the photo, and have never figured out the answer. None are as vexing as the Perez card to me, but I'm still left wondering about them years and years later.
For instance, why did the Red Sox put photos of players who couldn't make the team photo shoot in tiny portrait boxes hovering over the rest of the team, as if they were dead? Couldn't they just leave them out like other teams did?
Those are just some of the card questions that have been keeping me awake for the last 30-plus years. Maybe some of you have some answers, and I can finally get some sleep.
I will gladly admit that I have no ability to decipher things like this. I suck at puzzles. I can't figure out the most basic magic tricks. I can't even see the 3-D effect when looking at one of those Magic Eye images.
This card is a 1993 Upper Deck card of Mike Perez, holding a 1993 Upper Deck card of Mike Perez, which features Mike Perez, holding a 1993 Upper Deck card of Mike Perez, and so on, and so on, and so on. It's been featured on the blogs several times. Most recently it was on Dinged Corners. And someone was nice enough on that post to reveal the name for the phenomenon shown on the card. It's called lenticular something or other. I think. Maybe I screwed that up. I just tried searching for the post and couldn't find it.
But the name isn't that important to me. What is important to me is the question I ask after every magic trick. How the hell did they do that? Someone please tell idiot boy. He just wants to learn.
There have been a number of other cards over the years in which I have been stumped by what I saw in the photo, and have never figured out the answer. None are as vexing as the Perez card to me, but I'm still left wondering about them years and years later.
For instance, why did the Red Sox put photos of players who couldn't make the team photo shoot in tiny portrait boxes hovering over the rest of the team, as if they were dead? Couldn't they just leave them out like other teams did?
Someone has to know what that building is behind Carlton Fisk. I think I have been trying to figure that out since the first year I started collecting cards. Is it a hotel? An office building?
A soul-less corporation?
A soul-less corporation?
And perhaps someone could tell me whether Mike Griffin has a skin condition, or suffered a strange sunburn or if Topps simply mucked up the production of the photo (click on the photo for a larger image). If it's just freckles or something, maybe Griffin could have taken some legal action. Because that is not a flattering photo in the least.
Those are just some of the card questions that have been keeping me awake for the last 30-plus years. Maybe some of you have some answers, and I can finally get some sleep.
Comments
I'm not sure if there was any image editing programs like Photoshop, but maybe it was painted/airbrushed on by a graphics artist at UD.
I would assume the card was doctored towards the end of the production process, where UD basically had an idea of what each 1993 UD card was going to look like before they were to be printed.
Maybe Upper Deck's next time traveling trip willbe to go back in time when they had a liscense.
I love that effect. It reminds me of the Rand McNally Road Atlas I have where a family is shown putting suitcases into their vehicle getting ready for a road vacation. In the cover image, you can see a Road Atlas in the hands of one of the family members that has the exact same image as the cover the Road Atlas (them piling suitcases into the car).
What we see here is an example of recursion, a general term that can be applied to any situation where a paradigm is repeated, often in a paradoxical way as we see here.
I'm sure that this card was done simply by airbrushing the look of the card onto the card in the photo. My guess is that he was holding a card easily identified as being by another manufacturer so UD figured they'd replace it with one of their own.
I hope that's not to long winded.
Now I'm stumped. Great! I'll be thinking of this all day at work. Ha Ha!
Google Maps doesn't help much, but it's also not a time machine.
And thanks for the help. I think I need to take a photo-editing class.
I did a post back in January on how the Sportflics cards work (http://capewood.blogspot.com/2009/01/1994-sportflics.html)