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Why it's so hard to find a photo of Neil Armstrong on the moon

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Re: Why it's so hard to find a photo of Neil Armstrong on the moon

#101

Post by [deleted] »

anuraj wrote: post #95
derleth wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is it that nobody could land on moon after 1972? 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.

Has US ever been in an either or situation? Defence budget in 2010 is $680B, and cost of a moon landing is $18B in 2010 dollars. Given that both are deficit funded, and dollar can be printed at will, is this convincing?

[deleted]

Re: Why it's so hard to find a photo of Neil Armstrong on the moon

#102

Post by DanBC »

Karunamon wrote: post #67
DanBC wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a manipulation of the truth. By presenting that image as truth you have lied to the viewer. There are (or at least, should be) strict ethical controls on journalists to avoid lying to their readers. That's why quotes are what the interviewee actually said, and not what the journalist wanted them to say. And it's why pictures of events are what was actually captured by the camera, with minimal manipulation for pu…

And what truth is that? There was nothing of any substance added or removed to the image, indeed adding the black only served to make it aesthetically appealing. There's distortion of the truth, and then there's removing redeye from a picture. Which of these would you say this falls under?

The original image is fine. What is gained by faking the sky? Faking the sky, and adding a note to say that the sky has been faked, is fine.

Fixing red-eye is borderline and needs to be done carefully. Someone fixing red-eye and obscuring a coloboma has distorted the image, and distorted truth.

Can you really see no difference in fixing a photographic defect and adding in stuff that was not there?

Obviously it depends a bit on where the image is used, but I'd hope that any publication would list the changes made to a photograph.

Re: Why it's so hard to find a photo of Neil Armstrong on the moon

#104

Post by ams6110 »

batista wrote: post #49
waterlesscloud wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing the photo that Neil Armstrong took on THE MOON to a sketch of his cat is silly, and you know it. Also, every single image you see of Saturn from Cassini has been manipulated. Almost every photo of Mars from Curiosity is manipulated. So what then?

> Comparing the photo that Neil Armstrong took on THE MOON to a sketch of his cat is silly, and you know it. Sure, but not much sillier that saying that putting up a picture of a different person is a "slight inaccuracy". > Also, every single image you see of Saturn from Cassini has been manipulated. Almost every photo of Mars from Curiosity is manipulated. So what then? Notice how I, unlike TFA, never said anything…

As a "photo editor" did you demand that all photos be published full-frame with no compensation for exposure, or was cropping/enlarging/contrast adjustment allowed? I don't really see the difference, here. It's not like the substance of the image was changed. It's really just sort of a "negative" crop, or adding a wide black border to the top.

Re: Why it's so hard to find a photo of Neil Armstrong on the moon

#106

Post by ams6110 »

nicholassmith wrote: post #7
teebs wrote: post #4

Pardon my ignorance, but why is it so horrible to use a photo manipulated by the source--especially if you know exactly how and why it was manipulated, and you still have access to the original? This manipulation seems rather benign, too. Why must it be "removed from your photo archives"?

Journalistic ethics basically.

Rather astonishing that they would adhere to "ethics" so strictly with regard to images, when the written journalism is so often slanted, sloppy, and/or incomplete.

Re: Why it's so hard to find a photo of Neil Armstrong on the moon

#107

Post by philwelch »

batista wrote: post #29
jyap wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only people who care that it isn't a picture of Neil Armstrong are: - 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 ca…

> If the caption to the picture reads "Buzz Aldrin as captured by Neil Armstrong", who cares? I _effin_ care. E.g. I want a picture of Neil Armstrong for my article. Not a picture that _he_ took of somebody else. Not a quick sketch he did of his cat. I want a picture of HIM, preferably on the moon. That he "took the picture" is meaningless for the purposes of _showing_ the man in action. If I was writing about Knuth…

Neil's still in the photo if you look closely at Aldrin's visor.

Re: Why it's so hard to find a photo of Neil Armstrong on the moon

#108

Post by justin66 »

potatolicious wrote: post #98
justin66 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wide use of the photo over the years is proof enough that it's a great photo. People love it. With all due respect to the copy editing topic of the linked column, people don't care in the slightest about journalistic rule lawyering regarding the criteria that should be used for selecting photographs for a news article. They care about accuracy, which evidently isn't the same thing. If there are any worries about…

Thanks for trivializing an entire profession, and the healthy helping of weasel words - I was running low. "Church of Photojournalism", "journalistic rule lawyering"? Has it ever occurred to you that the journalistic standards surrounding photo manipulation may have actually been arrived at after a century of experience, rather than a bunch of tightasses obsessing over haughty principles, as you've so conveniently in…

> Has it ever occurred to you that the journalistic standards surrounding photo manipulation may have actually been arrived at after a century of experience, rather than a bunch of tightasses obsessing over haughty principles, as you've so conveniently insinuated?

I think the standard rules of photojournalism are ordinarily probably very useful. If the comments of the guy I initially replied to are truly representative of the field (you haven't given any opinion here), it's IMO clearly not perfect.

> So the fact that tens of thousands of photojournalists over the course of an entire century have arrived at, and agreed upon, this set of rules for reportage means nothing.

Is there truly a consensus position on something this specific? Such that it would categorically be a mistake under the rules to use a (very good) photograph of Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon when the subject of the article is Neil Armstrong? In spite of the fact that walking on the moon is what Neil Armstrong is known for, and there are no proper pictures of him doing it, and a pic of Aldrin taken by Armstrong is the closest we're going to get?

I'm skeptical that the field's century of experience leads to such a clear and unambiguous conclusion.

Re: Why it's so hard to find a photo of Neil Armstrong on the moon

#109

Post by derleth »

anuraj wrote: post #95
derleth wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is it that nobody could land on moon after 1972? 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.

Has US ever been in an either or situation? Defence budget in 2010 is $680B, and cost of a moon landing is $18B in 2010 dollars. Given that both are deficit funded, and dollar can be printed at will, is this convincing?

> Given that both are deficit funded, and dollar can be printed at will

This bespeaks a gross lack of knowledge about how a modern economy works.

Re: Why it's so hard to find a photo of Neil Armstrong on the moon

#110

Post by bootload »

azernik wrote: post #96
bootload wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"... at least a billion people out there who still think this guy: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/AS11-40-5903HR.jpg is Neil Armstrong ..." 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.

That's a little more than "cursory" - I know I've never looked closely enough to read the nametag.

In the Apollo 14 mission ~ http://www.digplanet.com/wiki/Apollo_14 NASA introduced red stripes (Public Affairs stripes) to make media identification b/w COM & LMP (Lunar Module Pilot) easier ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_space_suit
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