Stop for a moment and think about how many photos might have been taken of the symbol of Seattle, the Space Needle. That number must be in hundreds of millions since the structure was first built for the 1962 Seattle World's Fair.

But few people have taken as many photos of it, in as many lighting conditions or from as many different angles as West Seattle based photographer David Rosen. Rosen, whose work often appears on WestSeattleHerald.com and in our print edition was tapped by Space Needle Marketing Director David Mandapat as a source for photos of the iconic structure and referred to West Seattle publisher Petyr Beck of Documentary Media LLC.

The 12 year old company specializes in, "regional history, photography, corporate history and cookbooks," said Beck, with the Ray's Boathouse Cookbook being a popular title.

"What we liked about David's work was that he has quite a large number of different images of the Needle and the cityscape and that he has a real selection of different moods in his images to go with Knute Berger's text."

Rosen submitted more than 20 images for the book and they chose four of them. "If we had known about David's images sooner we would have used more," said Beck. One of the images was shot last year as the Needle painted it's top red in support of the Japanese Tsunami Relief Fund. Another, with the flag atop the Needle at half mast was taken on the ten year anniversary of Sept. 11. Mandapat who has used Rosen's images previously saw those two on Rosen's Facebook page and passed them along to Beck.

The book, commissioned by the Space Needle and written by Knute Berger, is 183 pages and documents the construction and history of the Space Needle. The soft cover edition at $24.95 will be sold in the Space Needle Gift Shop and selected retail outlets before it becomes available online or through other retailers. There are 10,000 copies printed at this time. A limited edition hard cover version will be exclusively at the Space Needle for $32.95. This is the second Space Needle book the company has published.

The book will be part of the 50th Anniversary Space Needle celebration this weekend and at that event which goes on all day, the Sealth High School Marching Band will make an appearance at 12:30. The celebration (which launches a six month series of events) includes events all day long and tickets to the top have been reduced (for one day only) to the 1962 price of $1. If you go, get there early since there are a limited number of tickets to the top. The festivities begin at 7:30 am and the Needle will close for a private event at 3pm.

NOTE: David Rosen also operates his own photography business SlickPix Photography in addition to being a contributing reporter/photographer for the West Seattle Herald.