The portraits for NASA's Artemis II mission are so striking, we needed to learn more. PetaPixel spoke with NASA Scientific Photographer Josh Valcarcel to learn about how he created the exceptional photos.
The Z9 is the first mirrorless camera Valcarcel has used, and he’s a big fan of its electronic viewfinder.
“I’ve wanted to do something like this since I got to NASA almost six years ago. I always wanted to do a different kind of crew portrait, and, amazingly, I got the opportunity to do it with Artemis II.” From a design perspective, Valcarcel thinks some of the graphics, especially in the ISS portrait, are distracting and take away from the crew.
There’s a theme of paring things down throughout the Artemis II portraits. Even the Apollo 11 portraits, which have a remarkably modern feel thanks to their simple aesthetic, include a relatively busy background.In the Artemis II crew portrait, each astronaut has a unified expression. They have a bit of the “Michael Collins expression” of determination and seriousness but with a bit of a softer edge.
“I really pushed for the background to have a splash of color. I thought that grayscale would be lifeless and lack character. I felt that a touch of color would play well with the orange spacesuits. I worked really hard to get what I thought was a muted blue that would not immediately feel like blue but feels like blue.”
He utilized a combination of Rembrandt and loop lighting. If there’s too much contrast for a group portrait, the subjects can look obscured because their faces are smaller in the frame. The angle of the other three astronauts, Wiseman, Glover, and Hansen, allow the viewer to see their national flag patches, providing important information about each astronaut without needing to include extraneous graphics like the ISS portrait Valcarcel referenced, which includes extra flags overlaid on the image.What’s interesting is that while the composition itself was established long in advance, the location of each astronaut was changed during the shoot.
“I’ve always given myself permission to fail confidently. I’ve allowed myself to learn from my mistakes. But this is an instance when you can’t fail. I had to trust myself, all my experience — I had to trust that my sensibilities aren’t nonsensical.”
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