(applause)

So, I've been a magazine photographer for

just under 30 years,

I started as a photojournalist in California.

And I grew up in southern California.

And in some way, I kind of feel that my dad,

who is not a photographer, who is a welder,

his photograph of the Apollo 11 launch may very well have

ignited my lifelong passion for photography.

Many people feel that when they experience--

they experience a moment first-hand,

there's a real, clear anchor to that point in time,

and we have this paradigm of that experience

that lives with us.

After that launch took place, for the next several days

humankind would be united as a species,

and my dad realized that this was a significant moment.

So much so, that he got our camera off the shelf,

family camera, dusted it off, and he had it at the ready

to take a picture of the launch off the TV screen.

This thing starts to lift off the pad,

and I remember the distinct pop of the flashbulb.

When my dad took that picture,

it's really cemented in my memory.

Sent the film to the pharmacy, the local pharmacy,

film came back, then we had this perfect photograph

of our TV set.

(audience laughs)

The flashbulb had obviously washed out the image

on the screen,

hence, my dad's career as a welder

really burgeoned after that.

And I was incredibly disappointed,

and I remember I was so disappointed.

But now, to me it's almost, it's like,

almost a religious relic to me like, it takes me there.

Apollo 15, 1971, Dave Scott was the mission commander.

This was the first mission that NASA specifically trained

the astronauts to be geologists and observers,

and really use their learned expertise

to try to communicate back to the scientists on the ground

what they were seeing.

NASA, in its infinite wisdom and incredible precaution,

decided they wanted to land at a region called

Marius Hills, which is really similar in terrain

to the Apollo 11, 12, and 14 landing sites,

basically a really safe, flat surface, kind of lunar desert.

On the other hand, the geologists wanted to land

at a locations called Hadley, Hadley Crater, Hadley Rille.

So, a very, very rugged region

at the base of the Apennine Mountains, which you see here.

They're sometimes referred to as the Lunar Himalayas,

they're massive mountains.

And of course, the geologists on Earth

they wanna know, what's there, what's there?

They pushed for the Apennines, NASA pushed for Marius.

There was a stalemate that was reached,

and there's kind of a legendary meeting that took place

where it's like, you know, we're sequestering ourselves

into this room until we decide where we're gonna land.

Everybody weighed in.

Stalemate, right at the end of the meeting Dave Scott,

mission commander, gave his opinion on it.

Dave said that, landing in Hadley would be trickier.

But I'm confident that we can land at either site.

From what I've learned in the field,

the Hadley-Apennine site, with its complex variety

of features, both impact and volcanic, is the best choice

for putting together a picture of how the Moon came to be.

It will be a little riskier,

but the Apennines have something else.

They have grandeur.

And I believe there's something to be said

for exploring in beautiful places.

It's good for the spirit.

And now I'm gonna start crying.

Hold on. I, like, American Idol auditions,

I'm like, on the floor in the fetal position.

(audience laughs)

So, the thing I find beautiful about that

is, you know, leading up until that point,

astronauts were really test pilots,

they were fighter pilots, they were engineers,

they were button-pushers.

They were working the problem,

regardless of what was going on.

And NASA started to try to push the astronauts

into sort of a more poetic phase of exploration.

They wanted the kind of spirit of the mission to come out.

They really, really pushed for that, there were--

Alan Bean was sketching on the moon,

you know there was a great quote by Pete Conrad

where Al Bean said, Look up, look at the Earth,

look, it's an earthrise, look at the earth rising.

Pete Conrad said, who was the consummate

engineer, test pilot, fighter pilot, said,

Ah, you seen one Earth, you seen 'em all.

So, we've got-- that was Apollo 12,

and by 15 we had Dave Scott talking about

grandeur and spirit, which I always found really beautiful.

So, in 1972,

Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt were on the lunar surface,

and NASA sent them a radio communication.

That Congress had just approved funding for the construction

of the next generation of space exploration vehicle.

It's called the Space Transportation System,

but it quickly became known as the Space Shuttle.

Early on, it became apparent

that the model had its limitations.

It had flaws, it would ultimately be wrought with

budget overages, you know, in its 30 year career

it endured tragedies and triumphs.

So, in 2011,

NASA announced that their three orbiters left,

we have missions for all three of those

each one of them gets a last launch, and it's over.

Growing up in that space period and that space age,

the Space Race, you know, everything was space.

Tang, I remember loving Tang, and all the things that

came out of the space program sideways.

So, when they made this announcement, I felt,

initially I felt this jab, and I thought,

my God, I've been to a couple launches, you know,

what it takes, the violence that it takes to sort of like,

escape, you know, the Earth.

It's this really profound thing.

So, I got this idea.

My wife actually had the idea, I think,

but I'm gonna claim it for now, 'cause she's not miked.

(audience laughs)

That I would go and I would document

the last three launches of the last three orbiters.

So, I went about designing

a way to shoot the launches.

There's so much infrastructure involved

in just getting this thing to work.

I wanted to photograph the result of this incredible effort.

So, I decided to photograph the infrastructure,

the buildings, the hardware, the vessel.

They're beautiful to look at, they're battle-scarred,

they're patched, you know, I went under one of the shuttles

and the thing had patches everywhere, all over, you know,

you could just tell it had just been through

hell, really, on reentry.

I went in the vehicles.

There was a sacredness to the inside of the vehicles.

All the Shuttle interiors and the ancillary stuff,

and the processing, the space suit processing stuff,

all of it, engine processing, fascinating,

I mean, these are industries in and of themselves.

These are space M&Ms, which I actually really liked.

It's the old mission control from the Apollo Era,

which actually up until '96 worked on the Shuttle program.

So, this all came together in a book that I released

in 2012 called Last Launches, my third book.

And it just is a chronicle of this program.

The only person that appears in the book

is this man walking down the ramp away from Pad 39A,

which, amazingly, is the same pad that

the Apollo 11 launch took place.

So, photographing the launches themselves,

this is a logistics thing like, how do you do this?

You know, the Shuttle's basically, in two minutes,

is completely out of sight.

And I wanna compress that into images,

and I wanna be able to expand that time.

So, this is the Shuttle actually on the pad,

this is similar, this black part right here

is the flame trench.

So, you see these huge, solid rocket boosters here,

when they ignite, fire comes down through the pad

into the flame trench.

And it goes through this big port.

And there are these nozzles, which is really interesting.

These are all water nozzles.

And just prior to the engine start,

they drop millions of gallons of water

down into the flame trench, because the sound pressure wave

from the Shuttle engines igniting and the vibration

would just rattle the thing apart.

So, they used the water for sound suppression.

And it also immediately vaporizes,

so, it adds to the big show, of this--

you know, part of what you see is steam,

part of what you see is smoke.

So, overcoming those technical difficulties, especially

with regards to getting the cameras to start firing,

you know, the closest any spectator can be

to the launch site is three miles.

And I said, well, how close do you guys view it from?

You know, I wanna be there,

I don't wanna be with all the yahoos at the press side,

I wanna be with you guys.

You know, and they said, three miles.

Like, that's how close we get to the launch.

And I just thought, this is ridiculous!

But, you know, in order to document the thing I wanted to,

the cameras had to be very close to the vehicle.

So, I had an electrical engineer build me

these sound triggers that would work within the parameters

of the assignment, and as soon as the sound

from the engines firing started--

cameras started firing.

So, what I had to do was I had to figure out like,

what images I'm making, I'm not just gonna randomly

set up a bunch of cameras right out--

I wanna document this thing as a story.

So, I'd storyboard each launch, I'd figure out

what camera, where it would be placed, the focal length,

place where it would be, number the camera,

and I laid out all the boards before

I'd start setting cameras.

So, I know what the Shuttle does, I know what it does,

it goes up, it rolls, it's very calculated every time.

So, I know I can compose frames

that are gonna yield images, that are strong,

I just don't want to be repeating myself.

So, this is the press site,

this is the old launch clock from the Apollo Era,

kind of a relic of that era.

And this is how far away I am from the actual launch.

So, this right here is the launch tower.

And that's, here's this bay, and here's our clock,

and then there's the tower, and literally,

the first time I thought, this is ridiculous,

look how far away I am. This is not gonna be cool.

It could not be any further from not cool.

I consciously didn't photograph any landings.

It was all about this gesture,

you know, this grand gesture.

To me, a landing was, it was almost like,

landings are kind of bittersweet, you know,

you're happy the vehicle returned with the payload,

and the experience that was had by all aboard,

but there's something about the grandeur

that we talked about earlier, that was so--

such an expression of optimism for me.

So, here we go.

It's two minutes into the flight,

it's 44 miles downrange.

At the tip of that smoke column

you can just see the engines,

just as they're ready to burn out.

This is Atlantis. I love this angle for the Shuttle,

I call it Her Sexy Angle, (audience laughs)

I just, I really like that angle for her.

That's all the ice, you see all the ice falling down,

off the tank from the liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen.

These are always tricky to set

the frames for because I'll set the frame at the pad,

and then just tilt up to the sky

and lock the camera off, set the focus,

and walk away from it.

It's very unsettling to look through a camera lense

and all there is is sky.

This is Atlantis. I was also really fortunate that,

for the three last lanuches,

I had three different types of weather.

So, I got some very distinct-looking,

unique images from each launch.

This is one of NASA's helicopters that they fly around

during the launch, just to watch things.

And that's the column, that big, long, black shadow

up on the top there is the ceiling of the clouds,

it's the shadow cast by the column on the clouds,

I always loved that.

Everything's just so big, so audacious, you know,

I think Charlie Duke, of Apollo, he said,

look, I don't even understand how this thing works.

I know my part of it, I know my part of it.

This is audacious that we've even tried this thing,

but I can tell you what, it's not gonna fail because of me.

I know how to do my part of this thing.

And I love that, I love how optimistic that is,

you know, it's just this belief, it's this faith,

that these thousands of people, thousands of people,

that have been working on this thing

have all put their piece into it.

And it's just this-- there's such a beauty to it.

There's a great Neil Armstrong quote, which is,

Mystery creates wonder, and wonder is man's desire

to understand.

And I thought, this really wrapped it up.

So, thanks very much.

(applause)