Today is the 51st anniversary of Neil Armstrong taking the first steps of any human being on the Moon.  Between 1969 and 1972, 11 more men would walk across the Moon.  As of today, only four of them — Charles Duke, Buzz Aldrin, David Scott, and Harrison Schmitt — are still alive.  The final manned mission to the Moon was in 1972.  No one has stepped foot upon it since.

No one has been to the Moon in my lifetime and it’s sad to think that someday, there won’t be anyone left who has experienced walking on the lunar surface.  We spent years trying to get to the Moon and now, we just take it for granted.  We don’t appreciate the enormous risks that men like Armstrong, Aldrin, and Michael Collins took during the first moon landing.  Today, would we even be able to pull off something like a moon landing or would we be too busy arguing with each other to care about anything beyond our own petty disagreements?

As a photographer, the Moon is one of my favorite subjects.  Unfortunately, it’s not easy to take a good picture of the Moon.  Every time that we’ve had a Super Moon or a Blood Moon, I’ve stood outside in our back yard with my camera and I’ve taken a lot of blurry pictures.  In most of them, the Moon just looks like any other distant star in the night sky.

However, sometimes, I get lucky.  Of all the pictures that I’ve ever taken of the moon, these four are my favorites:

Happy Moon Day from Through the Shattered Lens!  My hope is that you’ll use his day to not only celebrate the first walk across the Moon but also the ambition and the imagination that made it all possible in the first place.