subscribe 0330 333 1113 I http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I 20 July 2019 27http://www.zeiss.com/moon/promotion
This offer is valid 20/07/2019 – 20/09/2019 and applies only to selected lenses from the Batis, Touit and Loxia lens families. Purchases are limited
to one piece per lens type and per customer. Valid only for purchases from currently authorised and participating ZEISS specialist dealers and
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are available to sustain the programme.
The book The NASA
Archives: 60 Years in
Space, co-authored and
edited by Piers Bizony,
was published in June
2019 by Taschen (ISBN:
978-3-8365-6950-7) with
an RRP of £100. To find
out more, go to http://www.
taschen.com.They were seriously important in
helping to inspire environmental
awareness. No wonder that Apollo 8
astronaut William Anders said
afterwards, “We went all the way to
the moon, but what we discovered
was the Earth.”’
It was Anders who shot the iconic
‘Earthrise’ image from orbit on
24 December 1968 (see page 32),
using custom 70mm format Kodak
Ektachrome colour film and a
highly modified Hasselblad 600
EL with an electric drive. In
August 2003 Anders’s ‘Earthrise’
picture was included in the LIFE
book 100 Photographs that
Changed the World.
Yet not all NASA images have
been received as warmly as the
shot by Anders, with some doubting
the veracity of the moon images.
Piers Bizony is quick to debunk that
notion: ‘In terms of astronaut
photography, we hear a lot of
nonsense from the moon landing
conspiracy nuts that everything
must have been faked because the
Apollo photos are suspiciously good,
as if lit in a studio.’
He adds, ‘Actually only a tiny
fraction [of the images] are really
worth publishing, and we tend tosee the same shots used again and
again, because shooting on the
moon, with the sun glaring, and
the surface often either blindingly
bright or in deep shadow was very,
very hard. Plus, of course, hundreds
of images are not aimed very well
because the astronauts could only
point their cameras very roughly
at their targets.’Advances and archives
Despite being such a revolutionary
agency in terms of spacecraft
technology, NASA has often relied
on others for imaging technologies.
Bizony explains, ‘NASA tends
to adopt imaging technologies
designed by other people, such
as Hasselblad, Nikon or, for the
robotic probes, Malin Space Science
Systems. I would say that, just
as there’s no such thing as “the
greatest photograph ever taken”,
there’s also no way to choose a
greatest ever image or imaging
system from among NASA’s
overwhelmingly incredible history
of epic explorations.’
Over 400 historic images feature
in the book The NASA Archives: 60
Years in Space, which is an
in-depth visual and textual recordof the first six decades of the
agency’s operations. Bizony reveals,
‘There were plenty of lively
discussions about image choices,
because we all had our favourites.
We had to choose around 400 from
a potential list of 3,000 that we
had archived and prepared. That
was very tough, having to let go
of so many fabulous images
because we simply couldn’t have
fitted them all in.’
Of the book, Bizony sums up, ‘It’s a
reminder that the USA is capable of
stunning and uplifting achievements
that benefit the entire world.
Looking at America today, you have
to wonder if it is still capable of
something like Apollo or perhaps it
is a nation in decline? It’s always
important to remind people of what
is possible, so that at least they can
dream of extending what’s already
been done and pushing onwards to
new adventures, both in space
and on the ground.’Saturn V’s kerosene-
powered first stage
burned more fuel in a
single second than
Charles Lindbergh did
during his entire 33-hour
transatlantic flightAbove: Apollo 11’s
view of Earth
shortly before the
combined vehicle
left orbit and
entered a trajectory
for the moon