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The clouds beyond the seven windows of the dome of the International Space Station were "simply spectacular."
The shot is that of a retired Lake County College professor and dean of Dean Roland Miller's favorites, as part of a collaboration between Miller and Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli for document the interior of the International Space Station.
The dome, the iconic observation dome of the station, is a busy place, so Miller knew it was unlikely that Nespoli would have the chance to wait for this model to appear.
"It's a pretty picture in itself, and then the circular window almost reflects the Earth itself – that blue and white round orb," Miller said. "The lighting of the ocean in a window is a kind of money. Cloud structure – I'm sure they see them a lot, but I've never seen a photo like the dome.
Soon after graduating, Miller, a Mount Prospect native, began teaching photography at the Brevard Community College, now Eastern Florida State College, on Florida's famous Space Coast.
The college was not far from the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Base, where an old darkroom was being remodeled, Miller said. He received a call to know how to get rid of chemicals.
While helping the base to solve this problem, Miller said he found himself on a NASA Gemini launching ramp tour in the mid-1960s.
"Everything was falling apart," he said. "I immediately knew that I wanted to photograph him."
It took Miller a few years to get the permission he needed to complete the project, photos that were hung in the quarters of NASA's astronaut crew for some time, where astronaut Cady Coleman has views.
The two were finally connected, and she proposed a project that would bring Miller's photographic approach to the International Space Station.
Miller describes his work as "a combined approach to documentary and abstract" and added that his goal was to record the interior of the station in a way that emphasizes design and composition.
"There have been hundreds of thousands – probably millions – of photographs taken from the windows of the space station and people doing things inside the station, but they do not really look at certain parts of the station. station, "he said. "I did not want to recreate what others were doing already. It did not make sense.
The question was how to do it.
Miller was inspired in 2011 by the Coleman flute duet with musician Ian Anderson, founder of rock band Jethro Tull, in 2011. Coleman was 220 miles above the Earth. Anderson was in Russia.
Coleman put Miller in touch with Nespoli, a "brilliant guy" who had been a photographer in the Italian Army, Miller said.
Nespoli said in an email that he still enjoys photography and that the chance to contribute to a project on the International Space Station attracted him a lot.
Nespoli arrived at the station for a six-month stay in July 2017, Miller said. He worked with Miller in his spare time, producing about 40 to 50 finished products.
The two men had a few brief opportunities to discuss the project before he left, Nespoli said in an email. Once in the space with the current project, they talked on the phone and via emails.
Nespoli used photographs taken by Miller in models of the Houston International Space Station or screenshots that Miller took using Google Street View as a reference when setting up photographs.
"It was a very symbiotic relationship," Miller said, adding that the goal was not that Nespoli be "a robot that does what I tell it to do, but then to put the his (touching) He lives up there.
The project proved more difficult technically than Nespoli planned, he added in the email. He expected his contribution to be similar to his role in the execution of hundreds of experiments conducted by astronauts in space.
"I am not the scientist and I do not need to fully understand the science behind an experiment," he said. "My role is to be the scientist's hand, and what I need to do is lead the experiment and produce data. So in that sense, I just had to take the pictures that Roland wanted.
But it has not been so simple.
"The problem, though, is that the station is really a place where the standard rules do not necessarily work (where does it go up or down?) And so I quickly found myself in the obligation to do so. interpret Roland's ideas and they could be implemented on the station, "wrote Nespoi. "In the end, I ended up taking a lot of pictures mixing what I thought Roland wanted and with what was possible at the time and what I thought was interesting and different."
Getting the incredibly sharp images that Miller was looking for would normally require a tripod, which was not an option in space. Instead, Nespoli found a solution, rigged the articulated arms he described as a "double tentacle octopus" built into the station to keep the camera steady.
Even the slightest movements create subtle vibrations in microgravity that, without normal gravity, continue for a long time, said Nespoli.
As the international space station is a very busy place, Nespoli added, he also had to take pictures in the middle of the night while everyone was sleeping and the station was silent to control the lighting and make sure nobody was on the scene.
Each image also had to go through the Italian Space Agency before Miller could see it, said Nespoli. The agency had to ensure that the images did not violate the astronauts' privacy or international agreements.
While Nespoli returned to Earth in December, Miller is still processing some of the photos, he said. The plan is to use the photographs as a basis for a book and display the photos in an exhibition at the time of the book's release.
This process will likely take several years, said Miller, adding that the book will be at the center of his retirement, which began at the end of May.
Twitter @mekcoleman
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