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The Moon 1968–1972

Project Apollo Archive 41

During all six of NASA’s manned lunar landings, astronauts were armed and trained to use modified Hasselblads. During the Apollo missions, NASA’s astronauts took photos of moon landings, moon walks, the lunar surface, the horizon, and the Earth with these cameras. The results included over 20,000 photographs by 13 astronauts over six lunar landing missions. This huge trove of photographs are cataloged at The Project Apollo Archive. NASA also released a large number of these photos on Flickr back in 2015. The photo above is one of my favorites from this collection.

Though shot originally for scientific purposes, many of the photos have an extraordinary aesthetic value that encompasses an inadvertently artful composition. The fine folks at T. Alder Books have sorted through the nearly 15,000 of these photos and came up with 45 images that consist of “unintended artful compositions” and a “beautiful, deft outtake quality,”. The collection will be released in a book entitled The Moon 1968–1972 that will be released later this month.

At a time when archival images are often hastily assembled into digital galleries that get passed around briefly on social media, it’s especially satisfying to sit with an affordable ($18), carefully edited, designed and printed archive of photographs of historical significance and esthetic value. Texts include excerpts from a speech President John F. Kennedy made about the Apollo program, and from an E.B. White story for The New Yorker recalling the first moon landing.

2013: My Year In Photos

The trend of taking more photos with my phone than my point-and-shoot camera continued in 2013. I’ve also been taking a lot more video this year. I have posted a lot more to Instagram this year while locking down my Flickr account to mostly private and using it as a backup to my harddrive. Here is a short video of my top 5 most favorited pictures from from my Instagram account taken over the past year (as created by Statigram):

2012: My Year In Photos

2012 was the year of the camera-phone for me. I experimented with Instagram, and Flickr as well as some non-social camera apps. I didn’t take as many photographs as usual this year. I definitely didn’t upload as many images to the web as in previous years.

Despite not having posted many photos this year, I did manage to get a credited photo in this Norwegian documentary about the 911 site and a credited video in NYMagazine during 2012.

Anyway, below are the most popular photos I posted to Flickr over the past year.

Nothing but bacon and sriracha

Broken dinosaur

Home is where the heat is

Rooftops & Telephone Wires

Eclipse Shadows

Despite not having posted many photos this year, I did manage to get a credited photo in this Norwegian documentary about the 911 site and a credited video in NYMagazine during 2012.

Benoit Paillé’s LSD Photos

I have been a fan of Benoit Paillé’s ever since seeing his series on the Rainbow Gatherings a few years back (Photography at Rainbow Family gatherings is typically frowned upon). But I had somehow missed this great set. Benoit Paillé explains it as such:

After taking LSD. I lighting up a candle in the middle of the wood and during the exposure, i make a meditation about the holism of nature surrounding me. Feeling the crystal vibration irradiating from the center of the Gaia mother earth. So in this picture i try to show you the magic,sacred metaphysical quality of the nature and new age bullshiting you .

As always, click for Hi-Res.

Big Blue Marble

NASA has recently published highest resolution image of the Earth from space ever. The 64-megapixel image of Earth was captured by the VIIRS instrument on NASA’s most recently launched Earth-observing satellite, the Suomi NPP. You can read more about the Suomi NPP at its official website.

Most Amazing High Definition Image of Earth - Blue Marble 2012
Photo via NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

Make sure to see this sucker full size to really appreciate the details and download it for your desktop. We all live in a beautiful place.

Finding Your Best Photos Of The Year On Flickr

It is getting close to that time of year when we try to determine what we did best during the year. For some of us that includes determining the best photos that we took over the year. If you have uploaded all of your photos to Flickr this is a real easy way to do this.

The Short Version
Click Here to get your best Flickr photos of 2010

The Long Version
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=&m=text&s=int&d=taken-20100101-20101231&w=me
The above links search through all photos (empty query q=), in text mode (m=text). It uses Flickr’s “Interestingness” algorithm to determine your best photos (s=int, interestingness is indeed a bit arbitrary, but then again so is the word ‘best’), between the dates of 2010/01/01 and 2010/12/31, and limited to photos taken by “me” (w=me).

Coachella Porn

Photographer Thomas Brodahl says of the set of photos taken at Coachella back in 2007:

While waiting for Red Hot Chili Peppers to come on stage. I was standing in the photo pit shooting the crowd. Everyone was so sweaty and naked. Looked like a big orgy. Albeit not a very pleasurable one 🙂

While this set was taken way back in 2007, I’m still a little surprised that people care this hard about the Chili Peppers. Anywaste, it’s a great view of the inside (the band) looking out (at the audience).

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