They went to take photographs of the moon. Then they looked up.
More info and sources at bottom.
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This video started initially when I was interested in photography history and NASA. As I did research though, I kinda narrowed on Earthrise - I was fascinated by how such a famous photo could be such an unplanned, nearly accidental thing. Even if you don’t buy my argument, I hope you enjoy seeing some of these amazing photos and learning about some of the cool experiments.
Sources:
Here’s a NASA 101 that’s very digestible. It focuses on still photography during Apollo and helped me get my footing.
https://www.nasa.gov/history/astronaut-still-photography-during-apollo/#:~:text=Additionally%2C%20the%20cameras%20had%20no,white%20pictures%20on%20special%20film
This is where all the photos are sourced from.
https://tothemoon.ser.asu.edu/
It’s surprisingly complicated to find the right or best copies of the photo, and it ends up being a bit of a judgment call. This site provides what they say are unedited scans in really high resolution (as well as copies in more manageable sizes and with some editing). I felt like I didn’t really color correct the images I used “right,” but I preferred having duller images to ones that had been super edited in ways I couldn’t judge. Anyway, your mileage may vary - check it out for yourself!
The Apollo Flight Journal:
https://www.nasa.gov/history/afj/ap08fj/
This is your best place to check quotes, chronology, and get all the little details on events, as well as clarifications on confusing stuff. So I think this is a fun place to nerd out.
Here’s a version of the Earthrise recreation NASA did (a few copies all over).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDf0ONl-nDw
Here’s Jennifer Levasseur’s dissertation. This really is what gave me my footing. For a while, I thought I’d need to figure out how to include her in it because it felt like a straight up adaptation. But as I read on, there were a lot of places I diverged and the scope of her thing was a lot bigger.
However, you’ll see where I got the vibe of this video and why I focused primarily on Hasselblad and Ansco Autoset.
Very influential and worth a read!
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=73273a2d30fafe731d36bf06a07b41ec46cdd1d3
Here’s that color patch photography paper:
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19720003236
Here’s a very thorough overview of NASA photography, by NASA c.1972.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19730009710/downloads/19730009710.pdf
In general, this is where I got all the other documents you see in the video. A quick search should help you find them but if you can’t, please feel free to email me. This is just such a gold mine though, nobody talks about a lot of the stuff in here.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search
OK, I can’t resist one more specific link here — nice synopsis of Apollo 8 photography specifically. This is what I’m talking about - they get really niche! I just had to figure out how to keep it detailed and still tell a story.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19700005062/downloads/19700005062%20Analysis%20of%20Apollo%208%20Photography%20and%20Visual%20Observations.pdf
Oh, here’s John Glenn’s memoir!
https://amzn.to/484KOaK
I won’t pretend I read it though - I was just mining for camera facts! He actually calls the Ansco Autoset a Minolta, which I think is wrong because Minolta bought them later (Smithsonian calls it an Autoset). Anyway, the dude is like the last American hero, so I wasn’t gonna call him out on that in the video, hence the elision in the quote.