Harrison Schmitt holds the Hasselblad camera equipped with the 500mm telephoto lens in his hand. He is leaning on Tracy’s Rock (also known as Split Rock or Station 6 Boulder) for stability in order to take high resolution photographs of distant features. The split boulder “came from a point about 1.5 km up the slope of the North Massif at an elevation of about 430 m above the valley floor” (Constantine, p. 137). The Lunar Rover is in the foreground. The slope of the North Massif is in the left background. [Original NASA caption for the photograph] APOLLO 17 EVA PHOTO Scientist-Astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt is photographed working beside a huge boulder at Station 6 (base of North Massif) during the third Apollo 17 extravehicular activity (EVA-3) at the Taurus-Littrow landing site. The front portion of the Lunar Roving Vehicle is visible on the left. Picture was taken by Astronaut Eugene A. Cernan, Apollo 17 commander. Schmitt is the lunar module pilot. While Astronauts Cernan and Schnitt descended in the Lunar Module "Challenger' to explore the Moon, Astronaut Ronald E. Evans, command module pilot, remained with the Apollo 17 Command and Service Modules in lunar orbit.

From the mission transcript when the photograph was taken: 165:43:48 Schmitt: How am I going to see up there to shoot this thing [distant features upslope on the North Massif]? 165:43:52 Cernan: Well, why don’t you lean against the rock? Go over there and lean against it.