Apollo Mission Photo Montages - Real or Fake ?

NASA Mission Objectives

When NASA released a huge & hi res, scanned film archive of Apollo Mission photographs, I couldn't resist having a play with them. I immediately set to work over the course of a week produced a stack of images from iconic source. Here are a few of my favourites. A simple one to Start. The Moon is Black & White so I coloured it in.

The Moon in Colour

Did we Go to the Moon ?

Part of my inspiration for the imagery was the controversy around the veracity of the moon trips. I always thought it was a double bluff. A great way to hide a top secret base on the moon would be to sow the seed of doubt that we ever even went there. Then it gets a bit more complicated again. I've carried out technical analysis on some of the Apollo Moon photos. I also have the beautifully produced official book ! In a handful of the moon images. (with astronauts on the moon), there are indeed some anomalies which really shouldn't be there. I doubt if you'd find these images online anymore. The analysis technique I used explored elements of the picture you cannot see and by amplifying these features they become visible. Yes it was enough to make me think about poor Stan K and him getting suckered into making moon landing films.. just to piss the Russians off, I guess. We have been to the moon. There's a reflector which they left. It tells us exactly how far the moon is if you fire a laser at it. A Russian team wanted to launch a campaign / mission to photograph the things they supposedly left behind, like those very nice moon buggies. The reasoning went something like, we could photograph the moon up close. If they really went, we could see the stuff on the surface, still there as it will be / would be for millions of years. That would settle the argument !

Record Covers

The photo montages play around with the idea of manufactured images and I wanted them to look like record covers so I used a square frame. I did consider using them as cover artwork for a selection of space themed track on my second album Abracadabra.

Made of Cheese

They say the moon is made of cheese. Or a hollow metal ball, so I sliced it up into bite sized chunks

POP ART

I was aiming for a pop art feel with them and started to explore the images further. The image Planet Cola was a comment on the commercialisation of the world, although, ironically, I'm sure Coca Cola would probably love it.

Modular Mission

By simple manipulation of the imagery and using a repeat with scale and orientation I quickly began building a fleet of LM's and Landers. I liked the idea that I could replicate the modular elements and create a realistic but totally fake image. It closed the loop on the original idea. I also injected subtle colour mode changes by blending layers. This also increases the incredulity factor.

Screen Print

Replicating a screen print effect digitally has always appealed to me. Partly because I enjoyed screenprinting with my Dad as a kid and also as part of my studies later. The effects can turn an image into a graphic symbol and there are different ways to achieve a synthetic yet photorealistic effect. These images were completed in Photoshop. I sometimes also create a digital *png stencil with ARTRAGE Studio PRo, which offer untold opportunities for working with photographic source in digital art. This bright pink background with white element takes us further into the obviously synthetic pop art realm.

MoonBase Chesil Corralejo

This final image from the selection is a direct reference to the technique pioneered by Stan Kubrick for 2001 A Space Odyssey. Not only was it released the year before the moon landings (1968 > 1969), it was the first time space travel had been fully realised in epic cinematic quality. Stan wrote the book, so to speak. The film used a big stage with rear screen projected backgrounds to composite the apes (famous bone smashing scene with the obelisk) and the photographic landscapes, taken in Spain. The huge screen was made of glass beads to give a realistic, luminous far away glow and the foreground has a false horizon in the rear of the stage. It is said that if you look carefully at the Apollo moon images, you will see the false horizon in every shot, where the stage meets the rear screen projection. I've looked at quite a few and when I adjusted the gamma levels, I was surprised to see the odd, glinting misaligned glass bead, some geometric supporting frame structures in addition to the odd string here and there seemingly attached to the suits at the shoulders.

3 Source Composite

The image combines the weird geology of Chesil Beach in Dorset; a 17km spit of pebbles with the dunes in Corallejo, Fuerteventura, Canary Isles. I purposely made the joins easy to spot and the scale obvious. It's my homage to the idea that Stan K was actually A) that good and B) actually did it. We did go to the moon, but that doesn't mean some of the moon photos and film wasn't fake. This project has been brought to you by NASA, Photoshop and the great powers of imagination vested in all human beings. Imagination is the only limit to human endeavour. I can't wait to see the Mars films. Actually the shots of Mars in the film starring Matt Damon as a stranded astronaut, The Martian were made from NASA data. They are a very good, scientifically correct version of Mars. Hang on, according to the Flat Earth Mob, Mars is just a rear screen projection on the flat screen sky. NOW who sounds ridiculous !