Entering Photos

The iPhone does a great job of bubbling up photos you’ve forgotten about through its Memories feature. If you keep swiping left on your phone, you’ll find a small set of widgets, and one is a photos widget that creates tiny slideshows from the same date (three years ago, today!) or around a theme (people with animals).

One night, I was looking at it when I realized, as I moved my phone, that it felt like I was in the image. It was a picture I had taken days earlier of a fountain next to the Tower Bridge, and it looks like you could walk behind the fountain. It was so strange. The picture looked three-dimensional.

I swiped again, and a new picture appeared with the same effect. It was the Wolvog cuddling Beorn, and I teared up because it looked like I could touch both of them. The Wolvog looked three-dimensional, and Beorn looked so tangible that he could have been alive.

I had to Google to figure out what happened because the Beorn picture was clearly old. It’s something called Spatial Scene, and you can turn it on for any photo on your phone. I was even able to use it on a picture of my grandparents from 45 years ago that I keep on my phone. You just tap the hexagon icon in the top right corner, and it temporarily changes the image into a Spatial Scene. When you’re ready to go back to normal, you click it again.

It is strangely emotional, especially looking at pictures of people or pets who are gone and feeling you could touch them again.

Have you played with the feature?