It was really born out of a desire to see a photograph of one of the most important moments in history – Neil Armstrong on the Moon – and the frustration that this effectively did not exist (Armstrong held the one and only camera). I decided to try and apply a complex digital processing technique, including image stacking, to multiple frames of the 16mm ‘movie’ footage to effectively create the image that was missing from the history books. As I started to process it, I simply could not believe the level of detail I was able to reveal. I could see fine detail even down to his eyelid, through his helmet – and it was recognizably Armstrong. As I was processing it, and the image became clearer, I almost felt like an archeologist brushing the dust off some long forgotten artefact. I was hooked!
I released it for the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. It was front page news and is regarded as the only clear, recognizable image of Neil Armstrong on the Moon.
I then properly assessed the whole back-catalog of Apollo imagery and found that it was inconsistent, and universally of a quality not befitting the technical capability of the original photographic equipment and film, nor the film’s historically significant content. This is mostly due to the fact that everything we’ve ever seen from Apollo has been based on duplicate film. Or copies of copies of copies of the ‘dupes’.
Having developed the techniques and now having the Holy Grail available (the original flight film, no more duplicates) for the first time in almost half a century, I made the decision that I simply had to undertake this project. NASA wasn’t doing it and nobody else was, so I put my career and business commitments on hold indefinitely and started working through the 35,000 stills and every frame of the 10 hours of ‘movie’ footage.