I'm assembling a second volume of flag photographs, which will mostly be images shot since the original "Wrapped in the Flag" publication, but I went back and reviewed the older pictures that were not originally included for whatever reason for possible inclusion.
#1 is President Nixon in the Oval Office speaking with the astronauts on the moon. It is impossible to overstate what a big deal this was at the time. Nixon's side of the screen may have been televised in color (I don't remember) but the pictures from the moon were definitely in pretty crappy B&W. Later Apollo missions would broadcast in color. Anyway, this is the original unretouched photograph.
In #2, I squared everything (DXO Viewpoint) and then spent several hours making exposure adjustments (the TV screen and the cabinet required very different treatments) and an insane amount of retouching to remove dust and scratches with Photoshop's Remove Tool. Finally, I used Palette.FM for the colorization.
The difference between #2 and #3 is the flag, which was unrecoverable in the original scan. I went through more than 30 versions with Adobe's Generative Fill before settling on this one, inverted the colors, and gave it some Gaussian blur to make a mostly vain attempt to make it look like it was part of the original video image. I may make another attempt later.
Great idea for your flag collection, Andrew. I would never have thought to do that. I love seeing everyone's creativity. I think the final result turned out well. I wonder if you could cheat a bit, and find a similar photo on the internet or from NASA of the moon landing with a decent flag, paste it on, then fidget with it a bit to get it to blend into your photo? This photo was just a random one I found after a quick Google search - Royal Museums Greenwich ....
That was my thought. Glad you posted it.
My thought, too.