Hi all,
for the first volume of my book "robotic exploration of the solar system" to be published next year by Springer-Praxis I am looking for images of the following soviet probes
- Venera 1
- Venera 4 (capsule only)
- Venera 9 (orbiter and lander)
- Mars 3 (lander only)
What I need are high resolution, publication quality pictures. They need to be some megapixels if taken with a digital camera or have a resolution of at least 300 dpi if scanned. I am looking mostly for present day unpublished or rarely seen pictures of mockups exposed in museums in Russia.
I will acknowledge your help in the book, but I will receive only five free copies and therefore I fear that it may not be possible to send gift copies to thank you.
Thanks in advance
Paolo

For a book, you will need to license those photos from copyright owners. The Russians are a lot more capitalistic about this now. You can argue (as wikipedia does) that the Russians cannot claim copyright, but no publisher will believe that or risk getting sued by TASS or Sovfoto or Novosti. Springer will want to see a letter of permission from one of these parties for each photograph. That said, I suggest contacting Sovfoto. They have an excellent collection of images, including all of the ones you mention. For 1/4 page size images, they will charge $200 per photo.

With regard to NASA photos, another source of "free" media used in wikipedia, these are often not owned by NASA. If you read the fine print, they warn about this. I know that, because almost every photograph of a Soviet space probe on the NSSDC website is a picture I sent to Dave Williams -- just scanned out of Russian books. In any case, they are not high enough quality for.

In my book on "The Soviet Exploration of Venus", I've already spent about $50,000 on photographs. It's a lot more photograph-dense than most books, but not written like a "coffee-table book". Kind of an odd beast. I doubt if I will ever make that much from it (science books like this only sell a few thousand copies), but writing a book is ultimately a labor of love.

Good luck!

Where (when) can we buy that book "The Soviet Exploration of Venus" ... sounds very interesting !!!

Well I hope I will finish it by the end of this year. I have some big software projects going too, so I've been busy. I might publish it on Lulu. What do you think? Will it be ignored if it's not published by a real publisher?

I'm also looking forward to Paolo's book!

I see absolutely no reason why it would be ignored just because where it was published. Just put a few announcements in the right locations, and I'm sure there will be a stream of people wanting to order it!

I would get it from Lulu - it offers a real opportunity for specialist books that might struggle to get to press to become available.

Doug

Ditto for yours!

Sounds like a great title so I'll buy one for sure