With the passing yesterday of Neil Armstrong, I felt like a close friend had passed away. I went back and reread "My First Photo Job," a post from the summer of 2009 on the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11. Now is a good time to repost. And Finley Holiday Films is still there. I am following the company on Facebook.

My big summer was in 1969. Forty years ago. I graduated from high school, made trips to Colorado and Boston, and watched the Apollo 11 landing on a TV outdoors with about 30 friends.

Also, I had my first in photography job. I was aerospace engineering student avoiding the draft. Several of my friends were working at a NASA contractor in Whittier. They were assembling sets of 35mm color slides of Apollo space missions for retail and aerospace companies.

So I dropped in unannounced at Finley Holiday films to fill out an application. I got an interview and bam, I was sent forth to sell the Finley Holiday slides and films to camera stores and aerospace companies all over Southern California.



I had gone into Finley looking for an assembly line job and came out a traveling salesman - something to do with my knowledge of Southern California aerospace companies.

So I visited every major camera store, every aerospace company and did repeated inventory checks at Los Angeles International Airport gift shops.

LAX was a great place in 1969. No security checks, secret tunnels between terminals, and me running around in a suit with a clip board. By my third trip through the airport, I was giving directions to visitors, helping gift shop customers and just making myself at home.

My biggest sale that summer was to TRW employee store. They purchased thousand of sets of Apollo 11 slides and movies. And I got a nice bonus.

In January, 1970, I purchased a Canon FT-QL and the rest is a 40 year blur. But Finley Holiday Films is still in Whittier. Here is their web site. I follow them on Facebook and Twitter.



Google Street View image of the current Finley Holiday Films in Whittier, California. The building on the right was Finley Holiday location in 1969. Back then on the corner was a taco stand - were everyone ate. The family owned company started in 1946.

Its SuperMoon time. The moon is some 14% closer in orbit, the closest to the earth in 18 years. Good excuse to go shoot the moon over Los Angeles City Hall. A similar frame was used in this morning's Los Angeles Times and on the LA Times.com web site.

Of course during the shoot, and driving home last night the words of "Take Me To the Moon" was stuck in my head. I dare you to watch this NASA flick on YouTube.

Today is the 40th anniversary of launch of Apollo 11 atop a Saturn V rocket. Another version of the Saturn V was actually launched in April of this year. As shown on this YouTube video, a 1/10th scale model Saturn V was launched to a height of about 3500 feet. Even at one-tenth scale, the model rocket was over 36 feet tall and 40 inches in diameter. And no this is not an April fools joke. This rocket is the largest hobby rocket ever launched.

Relive the Apollo 11 mission from launch. The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum with AOL has created an interactive web site We Choose The Moon in celebration of the 40th anniversary. The site will allow users to get minute by minute updates on the status of the flight. Of course we know the ending. But in 1969 the public had only radio, TV and publications to get updates. Now we can get updates through this site, or twitter, or facebook. Sign up for the fun!

JFK Library press release.

YouTube video of Japan's Kaguya spacecraft planned crashed into the Moon on June 10, 2009.

Americans don't know it, but there is a new race to the moon, but unlike the 1960s, its more of a friendly competition. Besides the United States; there are active lunar space programs in China, Japan, India and Europe.

On June 10th, 2009, Japan's Kaguya (SELENE) lunar orbiter was crashed into the moon after a successful mission.

Chinese lunar orbiter, Chang'e 1, was intentionally de-orbited and crashed into the Moon March 1, 2009.

India's Chandrayaan-1is currently circling the moon.

Europe's SMART-1 was crashed into the moon on September 3, 2006.

Of the current space programs, China is the most likely country to try and send men to the moon in the next ten years or so. So we better keep to our 2020 target date.

According to the wikipedia list of artificial objects on the moon, there are 170,000 kg of human stuff on the Moon, with only 382 kg of the Moon rocks transported back to earth.

170,00 kgs equals about 374,00 pounds or 137 tons of stuff we have already littered on the moon.

The most famous trash has tot be Alan Shepard's golf balls he hit during Apollo 14's 1971 mission. Enjoy the video.

My big summer was in 1969. Forty years ago. I graduated from high school, made trips to Colorado and Boston, and watched the Apollo 11 landing on a TV outdoors with about 30 friends.

Also, I had my first in photography job. I was aerospace engineering student avoiding the draft. Several of my friends were working at a NASA contractor in Whittier. They were assembling sets of 35mm color slides of Apollo space missions for retail and aerospace companies.

So I dropped in unannounced at Finley Holiday films to fill out an application. I got an interview and bam, I was sent forth to sell the Finley Holiday slides and films to camera stores and aerospace companies all over Southern California.



I had gone into Finley looking for an assembly line job and came out a traveling salesman - something to do with my knowledge of Southern California aerospace companies.

So I visited every major camera store, every aerospace company and did repeated inventory checks at Los Angeles International Airport gift shops.

LAX was a great place in 1969. No security checks, secret tunnels between terminals, and me running around in a suit with a clip board. By my third trip through the airport, I was giving directions to visitors, helping gift shop customers and just making myself at home.

My biggest sale that summer was to TRW employee store. They purchased thousand of sets of Apollo 11 slides and movies. And I got a nice bonus.

In January, 1970, I purchased a Canon FT-QL and the rest is a 40 year blur. But Finley Holiday Films is still in Whittier. Here is their web site. I follow them on Facebook and Twitter.



Google Street View image of the current Finley Holiday Films in Whittier, California. The building on the right was Finley Holiday location in 1969. Back then on the corner was a taco stand - were everyone ate. The family owned company started in 1946.

Thursday, NASA released the first new moon images from the recently launched Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera. Here is a good story at the Christian Science Monitor . The camera was turned on for testing, and wow, the photos were much better than expected.


Caption: Full resolution detail from one of the first LROC NAC images. At this scale and lighting, impact craters dominate the landscape. Two general types of impact craters are readily identifiable. Solitary craters which most likely represent a single impact event, and clusters or chains of small, fresh craters produced by the impact of lunar material excavated by a larger impact. Image width is 1400 meters, north is down [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera web site.

This YouTube video is dedicated to NASA and today's launch to the moon. (See the next Atlas blog item.) The video is from 2004 on the 35th anniversary of Apollo 11.

Atlas missile, left, sits on launch Pad 14 at Cape Canaveral when this photo was taken on May 14, 1963. A day later on May 15, Gordon Cooper successfully piloted this his 'Faith 7' spacecraft for more than 34 hours and 22 orbits. An United Launch Alliance Atlas V, left, rocket blasts off with NASA's LRO/LRCOSS mission from Space Launch Complex-41, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., at 5:32 p.m. EDT on June 18, 2009. The mission is expected to relay more information about the lunar environment than any other previous mission to the moon. Credits: NASA, leff, Pat Corkery, United Launch Alliance, right.

Headline today: Atlas Missile launched to the Moon.

What time warp am I caught up in? Is this 1969 or 2009???? The story says an Atlas missile was launched to the moon.

Yep it was true. On thursday, June 18th, 2009, an Atlas V missile was launched to the moon.

Story at LATimes.com .

This scouting mission has two parts. First is a straight-forward lunar orbiter to provide a new and better detailed lunar map.

The second part is a 21st Century version of the searching for water with a divining rod. Yes we are going to search for water at the Lunar South pole. Part of the rocket will be blasted into the moon and a follow-up instrument package will check out the blast plume before itself smashes into the moon.

LA Times writer John Johnson Jr. really explains this crazy mission.

My confusion was with the Atlas missile. I grew up following the Atlas. The first version of the missile was launched in 1957. It was the first ICBM. It was used to launch John Glenn and other Mercury astronauts in the early 60s. And here, 52 years later, they are still being made.

Of course the current version, called Atlas V, is vastly improved. While the Atlas was originally designed to attack the Soviet Union., today's version uses engines built in Russia.

Check out this wikipedia article.

Scott Kelby recently announced his second annual worldwide photo walk on July 18th, 2009. I had a blast last summer hanging out with a group of Thousand Oaks based photographers at the photo walk. Worldwide Photo-Walk Link.

Last year about 8000 photographers in 236 cities worldwide shot over a million images.

Well this year looks like the photo walk will be bigger and better. While I have already signed up, I am keeping my options open.

One option I would love is a moon walk. Hey - its been done - check out the photos from Neil Armstrong's photo walk on July 20th, 1969.


Full frame image of Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin, Jr., assembling seismic equipment with the Lunar Module in background. Photo by Neil Armstrong/NASA/The Apollo Project

First stop is the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum web site exhibit on Apollo 11 camera gear. Apollo Camera. Those big air-tight gloves make using a point-n-shoot tough.

Neil Armstrong was the official photographer for Apollo 11 landing on the moon. Yes he had a few other chores, but he was issued the important camera for the landing. It was a slightly modified commercial Hasselblad Super-wide Angle camera with only one film magazine. Those large gloves made changing film magazines kind of hard.

Al least the magazine contained about 150 exposures of a special thin-based 70mm film. Armstrong had enough film to document his two and half hour moon photo walk.

To deal with the harsh lighting conditions, Neil was also issued a Minolta one degree Space Meter light-meter. It was specially designed with large knobs and handgrip - again because of those darn large gloves.

For backup coverage of Neil's photo walk, the Lunar Lander was equipped with two additional cameras. First was a modified 16mm movie camera that shot time lapse one frame per second images of Neil and Buzz Aldrin's activities on the moon.

The second was a special black and white video camera that broadcast live video back to earth. But this backup failed - the original magnetic tapes of the video have gone missing - that was a previous post on this blog.

But the Hasselblad worked perfectly. To check out Neil's entire shoot, go over to the online Apollo Image Gallery page.

Located here are scans of all 129 images shot the first lunar photo-walk. The scans were done in 2004 from the original role of film shot by Neil and Aldrin. Yes while Neil shot the vast majority of frames, the camera was handed off to Aldrin at least once. Thus the irony - while Neil was the first man on the moon, there are very few images of him actually on the moon. He was usually the guy behind the camera - just like many tourists.

So Kelby, don't you have twenty-five billion dollars laying around and some 10,000 aerospace engineers working for you? Let's have a lunar photo walk! I am ready to signup.


Two views of Neil Armstrong on the moon. Above he is reflected in visor of 'Buzz' Aldrin. Below, Armstrong is next to the Lunar Module in frame taken by Aldrin. NASA/The Apollo Project

In yesterday's post I missed this link to photos of tapes similar to the missing Apollo 11 tapes. During the last 40 years the federal government has managed to lose the original copies of the Apollo 11 slow-scan TV signal tapes.

The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has released images showing what the missing Apollo 11 slow-scan TV signal tapes would look like. The tapes are stored in plain old boxes, five tapes to a box, with labels similar to the one showing in these photos.

From NASA press release: "The tapes we are seeking are a special size and shape, which is larger than most magnetic tapes used by the industry in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The dimension of the large tape boxes are 14.75 inches by 11.75 inches by 2 inches. Each tape weights about 15 pounds and is 14 inches in diameter and 2 inches high."

Link to NASA press release with these images.

July 20th is the 40th anniversary of the first landing on the moon. But unlike most other 20th Century highlights, the only visual evidence was on poor quality 10 frame-per-second black and white video.

There are lots of copies, but the original video is missing. At least NASA is up front about it Link. NASA is asking anyone who might have information, especially retired employees, to help.

Link to wikipedia article



This is a still frame from a copy of the television broadcast of the landing. Yes a better quality version would be greatly appreciated. Copies of the video are all over the NASA web site, YouTube and other sites.

Similar tapes with still images were highlighted in a recent Los Angeles Times story. Link . Tapes containing images from the mid-1960s Lunar Orbiter program were reprocessed and new, higher quality originals obtained.

NASA hopes to do similar video recovery with the original tapes of the Apollo 11 landing.

Nixon was President in 1969. Did NASA ask him about the missing tapes?

NASA 40th Anniversary Page