After reading the Armstrong family's statement last night, that's the photo which expresses the legacy he wished.
He looks ready to wink back.
Also, the picture of Armstrong climbing back in the Lunar Module is fine.
Conversely, to those arguing the use of a reflective shot of Aldrin's visor? I think that's worth including if I'd also included that shot inside the LM. An close up of this picture, showing Alrin's helmet, backpack, and shoulders, reading "Neil Armstrong took most of the photographs on the moon that had an astronaut in them. However he can be seen clearly in the reflection of Buzz Aldrin's visor here." Just pair it with a matching (size-wise) photograph, unzoomed.
He and Aldrin still have to get their spacecraft off the Lunar surface, rendezvous with the command module, fly back to Earth, and land the damn thing.
It captures a timelessness moment in between.
Uh, Neil Armstrong had a Hasselblad camera strapped to his chest. I'd say excuse the lack of sky composition. Besides, the original picture also captures the lander in the composition. Wouldn't you want more photographic detail in a moon landing operation photo instead of one which is more harmoniously composed but contains useless black sky? But like I said, he's taking pictures with a camera strapped to his chest.
.. And who cares if it isn't a picture of Neil? It is the best representation of the feat and overall project. Besides, he took the picture.
No, that's not what he's talking about at all. He's talking to photo journalists and he's saying if you have the doctored photo (the one with the skyline) delete it from your archives. Because you can't use it for many publications.
>And who cares if it isn't a picture of Neil? It is the best representation of the feat and overall project. Besides, he took the picture.
So every other paper can't print an article about how stupid you are that you put a picture of some other guy to represent Neil Armstrong?
Editors searching for pictures of Neil? Because he was the one that died recently and they have to write stories about him?
- People who know it isn't a picture of Neil Armstrong and feel like they need to point that out.
- People who are bothered by the slight inaccuracy that it isn't a picture taken of him.
Either way, he took the picture. He took one of the most famous pictures.
If the caption to the picture reads "Buzz Aldrin as captured by Neil Armstrong", who cares? Have you ever seen a caption which says that it is Neil Armstrong? I haven't. People just assume it is because he is the best known since he was the first man on the moon.
BTW in AS11-40-5903 they took it too far and cut Buzz Aldrin's antenna.
It wasn't pixels -- it was emulsion film.
Nor was it that precious. What would they do with a photo of more rock/equipment and less space?
I guess the photos was more for a documentation/publicity use than of actual scientific interest.
I fiddled the curves a bit on the inset photo, but still need to do something with that blue/violet cast on the bottom right.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8403291/armstrongs-picture-of-aldrin...
Second, any reporter must verify his, or her sources, otherwise they are subject to manipulation and if a source is falsifying information, for whatever reason, that information must not be used as the reported cannot know to which degree was the information tampered with. It might have been just a minor cosmetic touch-up, or it might have been a complete fabrication. So while the demand to remove from the archive a famous 43-year old image sounds odd, it's very much on par with a practise that any decent publication must follow or risk the integrity of their whole publication.
If crops, borders, rotations, etc. constitute "doctoring" then virtually every publicity photo NASA releases has been doctored. And if those minor transformations aren't allowed then surely none of the composite photos from the Mars probes are acceptable either, right? Compositing is way more invasive than cropping and rotating.
At any rate, NASA has published the raw version of all their photos and therefore, everything is verifiable.
that information must not be used as the reported cannot know to which degree was the information tampered with
Yet, in this case the reporter knows to which degree the information was tampered with - and the reporter has no problem verifying it either.
One reason I don’t want to see it: That’s not Neil. That’s Buzz Aldrin.
The main objection is that's not a photo of Neil.
Newspapers are based around a mission of delivering facts (or at least the facts they want to share), and when that core rule is violated the inherent trust is broken. So when someone is misquoted, a story manufactured and so on then the journalists have failed, are fired and cast out of the community (mostly). Photography was one of the biggest changes to news reporting as it allowed facts to be visually disseminated as well, but because they're essentially a snapshot of the moment as it had happened modification of almost any kind was immediately held up as a no-no.
Some newspapers are getting a bit more progressive, but every 3-6 months in the photography community there's a discussion regarding whether the tools photographers use should be allowed in photojournalism, or whether in the central mission of delivering the truth photo modification, even in a trivially form, is counter as how can you say the changes haven't gone further.
For the more curious: http://www.petapixel.com/2012/06/15/time-travel-and-ethical-...
http://www.petapixel.com/2012/03/08/should-photo-contests-re...
http://www.nppa.org/news_and_events/news/2006/08/ethics.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/22/opinion/phones-instagram-a...
It depends on how precise you want to be I suppose.
I wouldn't rely on that for any real information.
EDIT: Not to mention the fact that the suit says "E Aldrin" on it. I have a hard time believing they swapped suits, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwZPLfFcYoA&feature
Due to a glitch in the video it's not clear which astronaut is which leading up to the photograph, but if you watch them afterward when they talk through what they're doing, it's clear that Aldrin was the one posing next to the flag.
As for the doctoring, I don't find it unethical. I don't have a problem straitening a crooked photo, adjusting the contrast, etc to make the photo visually appealing. That's not the same as adding a person. I understand journalists want "the truth" but with film there are so many artistic decisions made when processing a photo anyway. Maybe the truth is that is was very dark or bright. Should darkroom manipulation be skipped and the photo be blown out or solid black because that's the real truth? If there was a scratch on the negative I don't mind if it's repaired as long as it isn't maliciously trying to trick us.
Lack of political will to fund it. Funding wars was more important than funding science.
> There are many unanswered questions here.
Sadly, no. We know precisely what happened, and that's the depressing part.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n17/steven-shapin/what-did-you-expe...
How come the flag is waving in a environment with no atmosphere ?
tl;dr the flag had embedded wires to keep it unfurled, also the pole was flexible and springy, it kept wobbling after it was planted in the ground
Darn the fluff, get the truth. Upvoted.
Even a cursory look reveals the astronaut has a name tag with "E ALDRIN" on it. Neil's always in the reflection of Aldrins visor.
Citation needed. It looks to me like only a small gang of wingnuts are part of the "moon landing conspiration believers" (I never met one). Like s slight portion of those believing that 9/11 was a CIA/Israeli job, or that there isn't any biological evolution.
> A 2000 poll held by the Russian Public Opinion Fund found that 28% of those surveyed did not believe that American astronauts landed on the Moon, and this percentage is roughly equal in all social-demographic groups.[19] In 2009, a poll held by the United Kingdom's Engineering & Technology magazine found that 25% of those surveyed did not believe that men landed on the Moon.[20] Another poll gives that 25% of 18–25-year-olds surveyed were unsure that the landings happened.[21]
Note that a belief that "man never landed on moon" could be just out of ignorance, not necessarily a belief in a conspiracy. And considering that both the UK and Russia have relatively very high educational standards, it's not hard to believe the percentage is much higher elsewhere.
> Like s slight portion of those believing that 9/11 was a CIA/Israeli job,
"Slight portion"? Citation needed. :-)
In Latin America, East Europe, Arabic countries, Russia and Japan ~90% of the people I talked to believe 9/11 was an inside job.
As for the moon landings - I'm one of those conspiracy believers. I've looked at what NASA&Co has to say and it's far from convincing. Here's a good site IMHO proving Armstrong and the other 20 astronauts never left Earth orbit: http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/Apollo4.html .
See here a British youth journalist challenge Buzz Aldrin about it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kKFYTBo6kA
