It’s the little things! I tuned in to the livestream of the mission and thought it was culturally important to share. In the stream, it’s hard to tell but I believe Glover was taking a photo of Hansen posing for a photo. I think they were preparing for press interviews.
Anders sadly perished a few days ago at the age of 90 in a terrible plane crash. Anders was a man of many talents. Running General Dynamics was probably not one of them. I’ll leave that story out of this post, but leave that to you look up. Instead, I want to share something else about William Anders. One of his greatest shining achievements, was probably this unscheduled photograph he took during the Apollo 8 mission.
First, for the uninitiated, Apollo 8 was the first crewed mission to leave Earth’s orbit completely to reach the moon. The crew then orbited the moon some 10 times before returning back to Earth. It was a landmark historical mission.
A transcript from NASA’s program Earthrise: The 45th Anniversary:
On December 24, 1968, a few minutes after 10:30 am Houston time, Apollo 8 was coming around from the far side of the Moon for the fourth time. Mission Commander Frank Borman was in the left-hand seat, preparing to turn the spacecraft to a new orientation according to the flight plan. Navigator Jim Lovell was in the spacecraft’s lower equipment bay, about to make sightings on lunar landmarks with the onboard sextant, and Bill Anders was in the right-hand seat, observing the Moon through his side window, and taking pictures with a Hasselblad still camera, fitted with a 250-mm telephoto lens. Meanwhile, a second Hasselblad with an 80-mm lens was mounted in Borman’s front-facing window, the so-called rendezvous window, photographing the Moon on an automatic timer: a new picture every twenty seconds. These photographs, matched with LRO’s high-resolution terrain maps, show that Borman was still turning Apollo 8 when the Earth appeared. It was only because of the timing of this rotation that the Earthrise, which had happened on Apollo 8’s three previous orbits, but was unseen by the astronauts, now came into view in Bill Anders’s side window. Here’s what it looked like, as recreated from LRO data by Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio. You’ll hear the astronauts’ voices as captured by Apollo 8’s onboard tape recorder, beginning with Frank Borman announcing the start of the roll maneuver, and you’ll see the rising Earth move from one window to another as Apollo 8 turns.
Borman: All right, we’re gonna roll. Ready… Set…
Anders: The impact crater with uh – at uh – just prior to the subsolar point on the south side, in the floor of it, uh, [unintelligible], there is one dark hole. But I couldn’t get a quick enough look at it to see if it might be anything volcanic.
Anders: Oh my God, look at that picture over there! There’s the Earth comin’ up. Wow, is that pretty!
Borman: Hey don’t take that, it’s not scheduled.
[shutter click]
Anders: You got a color film, Jim? Hand me a roll of color, quick, would you?
Lovell: Oh man, that’s great.
Anders: Hurry.
Lovell: Where is it?
Anders: Quick
Lovell: Down here?
Anders: Just grab me a color. A color exterior. Hurry up. Got one?
Lovell: Yeah, I’m looking’ for one. C 368.
Anders: Anything. Quick.
Lovell: Here.
Anders: Well, I think we missed it.
Lovell: Hey, I got it right here [in the hatch window].
Anders: Let me get it out this one, it’s a lot clearer.
Lovell: Bill, I got it framed, it’s very clear right here!
[shutter click]
Lovell: Got it?
Anders: Yep.
Lovell: Take several, take several of ’em! Here, give it to me!
Anders: Wait a minute, just let me get the right setting here now, just calm down.
Lovell: Take –
Anders: Calm down, Lovell!
Lovell: Well, I got it right – aw, that’s a beautiful shot…Two-fifty at f/11.
[shutter click]
Anders: Okay.
[…]
Source: Transcripts of Earthrise: The 45th Anniversary
I love this interaction. It highlights just how much a team effort it took to take these photographs, and just how astounding the visage of Earth rising up out of the darkness as they orbited out of the dark side of the moon. Truly captivating.
In 2004, photographer Michael Wolf traveled to Southern China to document the lives of the toy factory workers that live there: their days consisted of sewing, painting, and other repetitive tasks. He documented how they slept, ate, and live under the often brutal conditions and demands of global consumerism and capitalism. (h/t gessato.com)
Davis is an Australian nature photographer. He currently lives in New South Wales. He is a professional photographer who specializes in the outback. Reporting for the Guardian, Davis’ captured a rare sight. The most stunning photo of all is that of the tree which has no leaves at all — what you’re seeing is a tree full of Budgerigars:
Wildlife photographer Charles Davis has been photographing nature for more than a decade. Budgerigars can usually be seen in flocks of about 100 birds, but after rainfall can number in the thousands. Capturing such a gathering was something he had always wanted to do.
[…]
Budgies taking flight from long dry Autumn grass. There were so many budgies flying around that Davis became cold from the volume of air they were displacing with their wings.
Cuban-born Abelardo Morell is notorious for his camera obscura works. They are in and of themselves wonderful little slices of life. The camera obscura method natively forces an image superposition upon the room the artist requires. Often inverted, these scenes are warped and contoured against the often unnatural geometric dwellings we occupy. The camera obscura was arguably, one of the first tools of photography thanks in large part to Daguerre. The images produces are often loud, chaotic and evoke the humdrum of city life.
Morell is a beloved artist who has mastered this ancient technique over the past few decades. Images of images are a wonderful recursive experiments that artists have dabbled with for centuries.
He’s devised a mobile camera obscura toolkit. It’s remarkable, and yet familiar in a sense. The tented camera obscura is constructed from a special material designed to keep light from penetrating:
This new “tent,” developed in response, looked much less cumbersome. With no frame apart from the tripod itself, it was more of a teepee. The black cloth draped over it, Morell said, “is the best thing I’ve ever found.” Several companies had sent him materials promising “total blackout,” but, he says, “we’d put a flashlight to it, and it just wasn’t good enough.” The cloth he eventually found is made by a scientific company that tests lasers in dark spaces. It creates “pitch blackness inside” the tent, Morell said, “so whatever’s intense out there is intense inside — focus, color, brightness.”
In a way, this a celebrated nod to 17th-century photomasking techniques. Some of the very first cameras had large black tents and huge glass plates. Traditionally, camera obscura images are tight urban interiors superimposed with inorganic cityscapes. But Morell’s latest mobile tent camera obscura produces a variety of images that evokes hints of impressionism filled with texture and picturesque brightness unseen in photographs before.
Morell’s latest body of work feel like a gargantuan leap from his Times Square Hotel Room, and yet feels so grounded and inspired from works like the masters. The organic background texture fogs your sight of the real foreground subject, and beckons you to squint. The foreground depicted, being often further than a few meters away, is clouded with dirt, rocks and nondescript organic grassy material collectively gives us a painting of a photo (in a way).
(Clockwise form top-left) “Wheat Field,” the Camargue, France, 2022. “A Single Tree in Late Afternoon,” near Arles, France, 2022. “Tree and Road,” La Crau, France, 2022. “Grass Field With Path,” near Arles, France, 2022.
Abelardo Morell has a gift. I hope he continues to push the envelope with camera obscura even further.
Perhaps you’ve seen the Wilshire Grand Tower and its iconic spire. Maybe you’ve seen The Picture and wondered how they took the photo in the first place. Look no further! Watch below.
One small note about this video: one of the ironworkers makes a reference to “[that] empire state building photo.” He is actually referencing the iconic, Lunch Atop a Skyscraper photograph of ironworkers constructing Rockefeller Center. That photo was taken 90 years ago today, on September 20, 1932.
I’ve been isolated in my Inwood (Manhattan) apartment since March 6th. I’m fortunate (and privileged) to be able to work from home. You could say things have been busy at work.
At home, during off-hours I try to keep busy to keep my mind busy. It’s important to keep myself occupied. I want to avoid the insane news cycle sometimes. Most of the time it’s nothing new. It’s just a never-ending story of horror-show.
Before the pandemic set-in, I ordered a new camera from eBay. I’ve been eager to find a camera that checked all the boxes for me. Living in NYC (at the moment), I really wanted to find a camera that could be my daily-carry. Maybe a fixed-lens, maybe not — but definitely lightweight and perhaps something small or akin to point-and-shoot cameras. Mainly out of laziness, I would prefer a fixed lens, but I was open to an interchangeable lens systems.
I love Sony glass, but I already own a a6300, and the Sony RX1R isn’t cheap (even used). I looked into getting a Leica Q or Q2, and wasn’t exactly in love with the price. Both are seemingly fantastic full-frame fixed lens cameras. But, I’m a huge fan of buying used cameras, and could just not find either camera at a decent used-price range within my budget.
So, I did what everyone else does. I bought a Fujifilm X100F. Buying used cameras on eBay was incredible. It was seemingly brand-new honestly (under 400 shutter count, which apparently isn’t very accurate for this model) — and boy does it deliver. I can see why the X-series is so wildly popular. Heck, some even call it a poor man’s Leica.
Here’s some images I’ve taken indoors and outdoors over the past couple of months while practicing social isolation here in NYC (none have been shopped or processed, these are just raw JPGs from the camera):
Allison Meier at Hyperallergic:
“Always restless, even daring when he had to be, Shaughnessy worked hard to get in and around the railroad, in all conditions, in all settings,” writes Kevin P. Keefe, former editor-in-chief of Trains magazine, in a book essay. “If the life of a crossing watchman was important, then Shaughnessy shuddered through a subzero night until the perfect moment when his subject dashed back into the warmth of a shanty. If the guts of a steam locomotive were interesting, then he’d insert himself into the depths of roundhouses and sidle up next to the hostlers in order to record the oily intricacies of valve gear and side rods.”
Born in Troy, New York, in 1933, Shaughnessy published his first photograph in Trains in 1952. While the detailed captions in Essential Witness are those of a true rail enthusiast (the “Pennsylvania Railroad 11-class 2-10-0” is identified as chugging over an elevated bridge), his images have a broader appreciation for how people exist with the railroads in North America, and how these systems altered the landscape. The silhouette of a tunnel in Canaan, New York, in 1989 reveals its jagged edges, framing the train with this rock that was blasted through for progress. Sometimes the trains are tiny against the mountains or waterfalls, sometimes the focus is elsewhere, like a 1953 photograph that concentrates on the cows in a Vermont pasture, unperturbed by the freight train zooming behind.
I love this photo. Train orders, are largely obsolete here in North America. But sometimes, it still happens. Traditionally orders get hooped to the conductor at the front, and the operator(s) at the caboose. Nowadays, operations are radioed or even downloaded.
Locomotive transport is and continues to be one of the most important means of transporting goods across land. It’s fun to look back and understand where we’ve come from, and to see where we’re headed.
Near the city-center of Rome, lies the Vatican City (which is technically it’s own country and is one of the few countries who is unable to host foreign embassies on their soil). Much of Rome and Vatican City is so unbelievable beautiful. Don’t take my word for it. Listen to the real expert — Anthony Bourdain. It’s one of my personal favorite episodes of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown. The food alone, is reason to visit the region.
Right next to Vatican City is the small, quaint, and just gorgeous little neighborhood of Prati. It looks just as charming at sea-level as it does from above (via Daily Overview):
The Maxar Worldview-3 satellite is a high-resolution commercial satellite armed with an impressive 31cm panchromatic resolution DSLR camera. Kottke shared this impressive low-angle shot the camera took of NYC:
Here’s a tighter crop which includes the Hudson river, East New Jersey, lower Manhattan, and Brooklyn (Prospect Park is huge!):
The Maxar Worldview-3 satellite is still in service today. It is not to be confused with the Maxar Worldview-4 satellite, which failed and ultimately lost control of the satellite mid-orbit earlier this year.
Old Harry Rocks are a uniquely gorgeous set of chalk rock formations in Dorset, England. Fun-fact, Dorset and the surrounding Isle of Purbeck are incredibly ancient. Known visitors to Dorset date as back to 8000BCE ????
Photo by @benjaninja8 via Imgur:
Since I.M. Pei’s upside-down cake of a modernist building first opened in 1978, people have complained about Dallas City Hall. Much of the decades-long jeremiad has centered on the vast, mostly useless—or, at least, underutilized—expanse in front of the building. The 6-acre plaza was part of Pei’s design, even though it’s more a shrug than an actual plan. To its credit, the city realized this early on and commissioned author and urban sociology professor William H. Whyte to study the plaza and recommend a fix. On June 15, 1983, Whyte delivered his presentation to the City Council. His idea: a pavilion with a food kiosk at its center and trees all around it, something that would provide sustenance and shade, somewhere to sit. He wanted to “bring down the scale of the plaza to the individual dimensions”—to make it “a place” (emphasis his). Apparently, the City Council was made up entirely of Alpha Betas from Revenge of the Nerds, because Whyte eloquently put forth all of these ideas, and all anyone heard was “BEACH PARTY!” A year later, in June 1984, the city trucked in tons of sand, and everyone put on their OP shorts. Lynn Lennon, who was working on a project about public spaces for the Dallas Public Library, captured the event for posterity. Lennon, whose work is in the permanent collection of SMU’s DeGolyer Library, was kind enough to dig up some of those photos for us.
Growing up in Fort Worth, I would never imagine something like this ever transpiring in the Cowtown. But in Dallas? Of course Dallas would throw a Beach Party at City Hall. The original photograph above was developed in 1984, which is apparently a part of the DMA’s permanent collection. According to this June 1987 issue of Texas Monthly, it appears to have been an annual event for some time:
I wonder when the Beach Party stopped being an annual thing. Here’s a couple of fun images from D Magazine (disclaimer, these were photographed by my friend, Kyle Pennington. An excellent food photographer, and musician):
I happened to come upon these on accident. Seeing a historical photo on Reddit had me searching for more historical photos of Dallas. As it turns out, D Magazine loved doing these Ghosts of Dallas segments a while back, so there’s some amazing gems in their archives if you’re interested.
Fellow blogger, writer, front-end engineer, and John Gruber fan (who doesn’t like Daring Fireball seriously?) — Tim Smith of BrightPixels is Kickstarting probably the coolest thing I’ve seen in a while. If you like services like Letterboxd or Micro.blog I think you’ll enjoy this Kickstarter.
More on that in a bit. But first, let’s back up. If you follow the blog here, you know I’m no fan of Facebook. No surprise there. There’s been some interesting developments recently concerning Facebook:
Oh. Fun. 2.8B fake accounts.
That. Is fucking insane. A huge admittance.
Our precious fragile WWW is dire peril ya’ll. It’s up to us. It’s time to dump Facebook. Zuckerberg’s recent pivot to “encryption” and “privacy” is a nothing short of malarkey and an attempt to circumvent potential FCC fines for future data-mishandling. He knows Facebook is bleeding users and there’s a reason why Instagram’s co-founder left Facebook last year.
To make matter worst, Instagram is horrible for your mental health. We spend way too much time peering into the black mirror of Instagram. It’s driving many of us into depression, others into despair, and for others inspiring fear and hate.
Magic Mirror, on the wall, who, now, is the fairest one of all?
So yeah. Facebook is horrible. There’s really no disputing that Facebooks suite of social media applications are tearing apart the web, our mental health, and society. *sighs*
Enter Bokeh. A refreshing new take on photo-sharing.
If you’re a fan of MLTSHP (or the predecessor MLKSHK), I think you’ll enjoy Bokeh’s vision (from the Kickstarter):
Bokeh will be ad-free, have a chronological timeline, and will be private by default. That means that all accounts will start off as private. Public accounts will have an RSS feed, will have the option to cross-post to other social networks, and will support custom domains. All accounts will have an indie web compatible export so you can self-host if you want to.
People won’t be able to find you by name, but will instead need to know your username to find you. Bokeh will never display publicly who follows you or who you follow. If someone has requested to follow you 3 times and you’ve declined, the app will prompt you to block them. In other words, these are your pictures and I want you to have precise control over who sees them.
I think this is really compelling privacy-focused concept. I’m an avidly public persona online, and that’s just me personally — but everyone isn’t into that. So, having this privacy-by-default option is really rad. Moreover, I’m digging the pricing strategy:
Bokeh will have individual and family accounts. Individual accounts will cost $3/month or $30/year, and family accounts will cost $5/month or $50/year. You’ll be able to add up to 5 people to a family account, including the account admin. By backing this project now, you’ll get a discount and allow me to pay for the initial development.
This right here is what hopefully keeps hate-speech at bay, and might even eliminate bots and spam. I firmly believe pay-to-play models will save our online communities. Whereas, free-to-play models might become (predictably) the last bastions of hate-speech.
I really like Tim’s blog. I really like Tim’s idea and that’s why I’m backing his project. I really want privacy to win. But more importantly I want us to win. The more we use services like Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp — the more we lose. For the longest time, I thought Apple was uniquely positioned to bring us a privacy-focused photo-network but that never really panned out did it? It’s time for a change. Isn’t it time we had a real place to share photos with our friends?
Given that Americans spend more time in their cars than on vacation. American vehicles are literally, a dashboard confessional for many, others an elysium.
American Interiors depicts the psychological repercussions of war and military service through images of the interiors of cars owned by veterans in the USA.
While some car interiors paint a grim, even bleak picture of veteran life — others are more interesting. Some are quite lively, and a reminder that our lives are complicated. Our country’s system is in shambles. The nightmares of country’s skirmishes and campaigns abroad that persist on were not created, nor are dealt with equally. I applaud anyone who can deal with the horrors of war.
I believe Casteels photography shines a light on problem in America that no one is willing to talk about: plainly, America doesn’t care about their veterans. We build monuments to honor them and praise their services but when it comes time to write a check, raise taxes or give our veterans the medical/psychological help they need — no one is willing to help.
I really hope the private citizen sentiment changes in my lifetime. M L Casteel’s book compiling his photography of veteran’s car interiors over a five-year period, can be purchased from Amazon.
