Tilting at Shadows

Photo rule No 1. Light travels in straight, parallel lines at any given moment. Shadow directions are constant because the light comes from the Sun--a single light source--some 93 million miles away.

Dark Moon, p. 21

There is only one problem with that photo rule: It has nothing to do with photographs.

As every competent photographer knows (or should know), faraway things look small, and parallel lines seem to merge in the distance. It's called perspective convergence and can be seen in the all-too-familiar example of railway tracks:

Since shadows are naturally parallel (what with the sun being 93,000,000 miles away and all), they are also bound by the laws of perspective. Here's an example of converging shadows that I found in some book:

David Percy's inadvertent demonstration of parallel convergence (Dark Moon, ch. 1, ill. 19a)

If you draw some lines along or through the shadows in this image, they will meet at a spot just above the left side of the picture. (Better still, use a couple of a pieces of paper instead of a pen to follow those shadows so you won't have to scrub ink off your screen.)

If you don't have any paper or pen, then here are my own guidelines:

There are even tighter examples than the one above. When Pete Conrad took this picture on the moon, he was aiming the camera close to the sun, which caused this excellent example of convergence for some later investigator to misread:

Alan Bean carrying the ALSEP package out from the LM.

What Percy calls "examples of artificial lighting in a fully controlled 'studio environment'" (Dark Moon, p. 22) was merely an illusion which any amateur can duplicate on a fine day:

Shadows fanning out in Chinatown. Click to compare with Apollo 12 image.

You don't have to shoot straight into the sun to get diverging shadows. Ed Mitchell was standing about 45° from the sun when he made this fine photo on the moon....

...and so was I when I shot this scene of beautiful, unspoilt Canada:

In an interview, Apollo denier Bill Kaysing called the diverging shadows "one of the most significant breakthroughs" in the deniers' repertoire. But the only thing that's been proven is that the faked moon landing fantasies are based on some highly faulty analysis. Just how faulty we shall see on the next page.