NY Times Lens Blog and Apollo 11 People

Tim Visher

As with many things Internet, I heard about the NY Times Lens Blog from Jason Kottke’s excellent Liberal Arts blog when he showcased the Lens Blog’s coverage of The Tiananmen Square Tank Man. After browsing through some of the archives, I subscribed immediately and have been consistently impressed. Reading The Big Picture, for some reason, doesn’t make the Lens Blog feel superfluous either. They tend to complement each other well.

Anyway, the Lens Blog recently did a showcase of one Times photographer who decided that instead of focusing on the launch of the Apollo 11, he would instead focus on the people watching it. This is brilliant, in its own right, and produced some incredibly compelling results.

I especially liked Photos (the one thing I don’t like about the Lens Blog is that they don’t let you link to specific photos in the set, at least that I can find):

  1. 5: The intimacy of this moment combined with all of the right lighting happening and the magnitude of the moment in human history just makes this photo hit home to me.

  2. 8: This one manages to be both blissful and creepy. Blissful in that it captures of the energy of the square dance quite nicely. Creepy mainly due to the really tall guy who’s looking directly at the camera. Really creepy…

  3. 9: I don’t know what’s happening, but the guy standing near the back of the photo is clearly walking on water. It doesn’t look like he’s falling in. The woman doesn’t look like she’s being pulled in. He’s just literally floating above the water.

  4. 15: The old man here just is saying something very compelling with his expression. It looks like he may even be tearing up to a certain extent. This guy is proud of his country and of the moment in history that he’s witnessing. It’s the kind of look I think every child wants to see their father give them one day. I love it.

No fires, please.