The Life Boat - © Copyright 2010 by William Beem
This is the Command Module of Apollo 14, on display at Kennedy Space Center. It’s a 5-exposure HDR shot. I’ve mentioned before that my objective isn’t just to capture the reality of a moment, but to try and capture my sense of being in a moment. Sometimes that means creating a mystical feeling in the image. Other times, it may mean creating an image that makes you think you can just reach out and touch the subject. I tried for the latter on this image, because all I wanted to do while in front of this CM was reach out and feel it. I wanted to know how the texture of the surface felt. I wanted to connect with this piece of history. I also have absolutely no idea why we have this desire to connect through touch, but the urge is very real.
The room at the Saturn V/Apollo center where this CM rests is quite dark with small spot-lighting over the displays (you can see the reflection of those lights in the glass covering the hatch). Even if I weren’t shooting HDR, I would still need a tripod to get a shot like this one. The 0-EV shot was 1.6 seconds and the +2 shot was 6 seconds. If you didn’t have a tripod, you’d be cranking the ISO up pretty high and still wouldn’t get this kind of result. I know it seems awkward to go around lugging a tripod, sometimes you do what you have to do.
