The photography behind Earthrise

"Person infodumps about their latest hyperfixation" is my favorite genre of youtube. Thank you for creating great videos Phil! Your research and passion always shine through.

4:50 those wind tunnel photos are sublime; I’d love to see them on a large scale

As a scientist, photographer, and huge space nerd, this video spoke to my soul. Thank you Phil.

Bill Anders is a big supporter of the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, which I photograph every summer. Several years ago they commissioned a chamber piece, "Earthrise," in honor of this photo. I was 12 when the photo was taken, and I closely followed the space program. When I first met Anders at the festival, I asked him about taking this photo. Hearing the story directly was a thrill. And I'm glad to have learned even more of the background from this video.

I work at JSC in the photo lab. I have personally digitized all the Mercury, Gemini, & Apollo astronaut photography, frame by frame, at least once. I do not get much context when I'm scanning, just what I see on the film and a NASA assigned frame number, for example AS08-14-2383. This video really touched me, an abundance of context. Also so much that was very familiar. I loved the segment on the color and data charts taken on earth before the missions shot on the first frame of each roll. Those images don't get a NASA number so I wasn't required to scan them but I do and just replace the frame number with the word "CHART". This is the first time I've seen that someone pays attention to them. Also that photo of Wally Schirra holding that Hasselblad hangs in a hallway in our area in building 8. I will be sharing this with my coworkers & friends. Thank you.

ngl, For the quality of content and information that phil provides, i am just waiting for him to kick off into the millions!

I hung this photo over the fireplace at my first home. It is a statement of my generation. This story of how the photo was taken is amazing!

Thank you for making this. I cried. I was 8 years old when this photo was taken. Only 6 months later we walked on the moon, and I wanted to be an astronaut. It was the inspiration that made me an engineer. It was the photo that started the environmental movement. There is a tiny version on the edge of the exhibit in the Chicago Museum where Apollo 8 is on display. I have a print of this photo on the bookshelf in my computer room. Thank you again.

I was in high school when this Apollo mission occurred, and trust me - everyone was blown away by this picture. It's difficult, now, to imagine a time when you couldn't see Earth from space, but it's fun to remember that feeling of awe we all felt, looking at this picture. And, we have NASA and its Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions, to thank - along with all those who made it possible for us to go 'off-planet', and to see what we saw.

Phil, I enjoyed your perspective. From 1966 to 1986 I produced planetarium shows for three of Canada’s major planetariums. The American space program was guided by scientists. These good people can imagine what things look like — they want data, not snapshots. Planetarium audiences need to see how things look, and data are just nice talking points. I remember my frustration when I’d read a scientific paper with excellent verbal descriptions backed up by excellent data, and I’d say out loud, “Yes, but what does it look like!” Remember that first single picture of the whole earth from space — weather, landforms, but no political boundaries? Even I was surprised at how moved so many people were when they saw it. Of course, that was the way our planet looked — that single space craft that is the only home for all of us.

As a kid, I had a huge mural of this photo that covered one entire wall of my bedroom...as a young science nerd, it was ultra cool, and one of my favorite childhood memories. Every day, I imagined I was standing there on the lunar surface, in front of that gorgeous scene. Thanks for this wonderful "making of" deep dive!

Very nice presentation. When I was a teenager I bought a poster of this shot, and it had a quote from Basil O'connor on it that said “The world cannot continue to wage war like physical giants and to seek peace like intellectual pygmies.” This photo hung on my wall for a long time and I remember staring at it with awe. Job well done. Thank you sir!

I couldn’t help recite Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” in my head seeing that picture. The text almost always brings me to tears knowing that our fate rests in the hands of a sparse few who value personal power and profits over our very existence. There is no Planet “B”.

This is an excellent video. When you talked about how unlikely the photo was, it made me think that maybe most of the great photos were accidents of being in the right place, at the right time, having a decent camera, and taking the shot at the precise moment.

Fascinating. I was a kid during all the Apollo missions. We used to watch them at school. Get together with family and friends and watch them. It was such an amazing thing. The 60s changed many things.

Keep the ball rolling, Phil! Your work is brilliant, whatever the topic you sublimely present it to both those who know a lot on the subject and those who know next to nothing. You do really unique things!

And this, folks, is what journalism looks like. Stellar job on this. I’ve read those transcripts and books by the astronauts who were up there but it never fit all the pieces together like you just did. Finding all the context is one thing but stringing them into a cohesive narrative is the real talent. ❤

This is one of the best Video Essays about Photography I've ever watched. I will forever remember the idea that when I go to a location to get a specific shot, that I should look around because I might miss an Earthrise. Well done Phil!

The excitement in Jim's voice for a photograph, as he orbits the Moon, really warms my heart.

Hmm. If someone just watched the first few minutes this sounded much like a denial that the earthrise photo was taken from moon orbit. Hope those deniers stick around to watch the whole thing that shows that photo was indeed taken by a human circling the moon in a space craft.