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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

#91

Post by archgoon »

jakejake wrote: post #88

I don't really have a problem with the photo as long as the caption doesn't say it's Neil. It's a historic moment that everybody should recognize. He is known for this event and even took the photo. 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 j…

The 'doctoring' is only slightly above the level of adding a border around the image. If this is doctoring, then all Mars photos's are 'doctored', as they're stitched together from much smaller photos.

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

#92

Post by kinofcain »

nrbafna wrote: post #39

This is from a reddit ama where the OP has worked through Apollo 1-14. He claims it was Neil in the photo - http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/xove1/iama_97_year_old...

Kottke uploaded the CBS news coverage of the landing to youtube. The photo is taken after the flag was raised, about seven minutes into this video:

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.

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

#93

Post by kissickas »

TheTruthIsHere wrote: post #34
wazoox wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also there is another half-a-billion or so which thinks man never landed on moon. 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.

Obviously you live in US, get your information from mainstream media (instead of doing your own research on the Web) and belong to the upper middle class. That's in my humble experience the only type of guy, who would never meet anyone disagreeing with government propaganda. 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…

Well I appreciate you providing an alternate point of view, but I'm afraid I don't agree that reading a few sketchy websites doesn't mean you "did your research" at all.

I'm mainly commenting to apologize that some of your comments are now dead- while I could understand if this one were, your grandchild comments expressing interest in other peoples' (non-conspiracy) arguments are dead which I think goes against the whole point of commenting here, especially when child comments saying "your an idiot" get upvoted.

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

#94

Post by defen »

dustincoates wrote: post #55
nrbafna wrote: post #39

This is from a reddit ama where the OP has worked through Apollo 1-14. He claims it was Neil in the photo - http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/xove1/iama_97_year_old...

There were a ton of huge inaccuracies in that AMA. Here's a few things that were pointed out to be wrong: http://es.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/xp6il/methusela1915_i... 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.

Not vouching one way or the other for the AMA, but he claims that Armstrong is in the "astronaut saluting the flag" picture (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/Buzz_salu...), not the one where you can see the "E Aldrin" name tag.

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

#95

Post by anuraj »

derleth wrote: post #80
anuraj wrote: post #69

Why is it that nobody could land on moon after 1972? After all cold war was still on. All moon landings happened between 1969-72. It is really unbelievable that US would forego such an advanced technology that nobody else had. There are many unanswered questions here.

> 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?

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

#96

Post by azernik »

bootload wrote: post #31
monsterix wrote: post #10

Well that's a very interesting article to bring out facts. There are 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. Also there is another half-a-billion or so which thinks man never landed on moon. Darn the fluff, get the truth. Upvoted.

"... 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.

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

#97

Post by dustincoates »

defen wrote: post #94
dustincoates wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were a ton of huge inaccuracies in that AMA. Here's a few things that were pointed out to be wrong: http://es.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/xp6il/methusela1915_i... 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.

Not vouching one way or the other for the AMA, but he claims that Armstrong is in the "astronaut saluting the flag" picture ( http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/Buzz_salu... ), not the one where you can see the "E Aldrin" name tag.

Yeah, that's a good point, but he also says this: "So that's who I said it was. When Aldrin came back, he told me no, first thing Armstrong did was pass the camera back to me."

It's still hard for me to believe they were passing the camera back and forth. That, with all the other inaccuracies, lead me to believe it's fake. Why someone would purposefully fake that I don't know...

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

#98

Post by potatolicious »

justin66 wrote: post #59
batista wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which, if you take a step back and lose the journalistic tendentiousness, you will realize makes this about as cool as any picture ever taken. If I want to depict Neil Amstrong, the "coolness" of a picture showing some other guy does not come into play at all. Isn't it obvious? I mean, seriously, "as cool as any picture ever taken"? "visible on the reflection on the visor"?

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 insinuated?

This is something that bothers me about HN regularly - we have such a strong tendency here to trivialize other people's jobs, to the point where anything that isn't immediate obvious to the layman must be idiocy of some sort.

> "To someone who isn't part of the Church of Photojournalism, it honestly seems very simple."

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. Clearly you, a lay person who has never been deeply exposed to photojournalism, you know better. It seems simple.

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

#100

Post by nicholassmith »

001sky wrote: post #64
nicholassmith wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why it's so contentious, it improves the photo but it's no longer original. Oddly from a photographic side that's fine, but photo journalistic standpoint it's no longer the moment that was capture but a modified version. It's a thorny issue with grey areas.

"Burning" the edges [of the final print] to the extent it mimics the "deep black" of space, is in fact faithful to the scene. PJ's "Burn" the edges of news images everyday. That is, they "darken" the edges to create relative contast to the focal point they wish to show. This is not deemed unethical, but rather legitmatley "expressive". The terminology comes from film emulsion days, when the overexposre of the positiv…

It does differ from publication to publication, but it depends on how much of a stickler for rules and ethics they are.

I'm also alright with it, they had to do what they had to do to make it work and make it clear.

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