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Photography

  • William Anders, Earthrise photographer, Apollo astronaut and pilot has died

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    4 min read

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    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.

  • “The Real Toy Story” photo series by Michael Wolf

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    1 min read

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    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)

  • Charles Davis’ photos of thousands of Budgerigars flocking after a rainfall

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    1 min read

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    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.

    Charles Davis/The Guardian

  • Abelardo Morell revolutionizes the camera obscura, evokes the Old Masters in latest works

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    3 min read

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    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.

    “Times Square in Hotel Room,” 1997.

    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.

  • Ironworkers Local 433 members discuss The Picture

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    1 min read

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    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.

  • Jim Shaugnessy’s 60-Year Odyssey Photographing the Evolution of the North American Railroad

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    2 min read

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    Jim Shaughnessy, “Central Vermont local freight switches cars in wintry scene, Bethel, Vermont” (1955) (source: the artist and Thames & Hudson)

    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.

    Jim Shaughnessy, “Pennsylvania Railroad operator hoops up train orders to crew of a northbound coal train, Trout Run, Pennsylvania” (1956) (source: the artist and Thames & Hudson)

    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.

  • Colorful Aerial Image of City-center of Rome

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    1 min read

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    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):

  • Maxar’s Incredible Low-angle Photograph of NYC

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    1 min read

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    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.

  • A Visual History of the iPhone’s Camera Bump

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    1 min read

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    Photo by @benjaninja8 via Imgur:

    iPhone camera placement and product design, 2007 – 2019.

  • Mount Fuji Cutting Through the Clouds

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    1 min read

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    Just unbelievably beautiful.