The first rendez-vous in space, at 17,000 mph: Gemini VII spacecraft orbiting the blue Earth, 15-16 December 1965

Vintage chromogenic print on fiber-based paper, printed 1965, numbered "NASA S-65-63221" (NASA MSC) in red in top margin, with "A KODAK PAPER" watermark on verso, 20,3 x 25,4 cm

Stafford took this superb photograph with a Hasselblad 500C camera and its 80mm lens using Kodak SO 217 film with an ASA of 64.
His images of the rendezvous describe a graceful dance performed by two small spacecraft in orbit around the Earth. (Schick and Van Haaften, p. 48)
The two spacecraft are some 37 feet apart here. The blue Earth can be seen about 160 miles below.

“We reviewed the pictures after we got back. When we saw their clarity – the lighting, the Sun angle, and everything – we realized that they described it very well. The mission will be there in history forever.”
Thomas Stafford (Schick and Van Haaften, p. 50)

Literature:
Newsweek, 27 December 1966, cover; NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, April 1966, pp. 548-549; TIME, 24 December 1965, p. 34; The View from Space: American Astronaut Photography 1962-1972, Schick and Van Haaften, p. 51 (variant); Terry Hope, Spacecam: Photographing the Final Frontier from Apollo to Hubble, p. 67 (variant); Moon: Man’s Greatest Adventure, Thomas, ed., p. 115 (variant).