Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Cajun Sunrise

 
Cajun Sunrise, Albury Botanic Gardens
 
Edit 1
 
Edit 2

A great photo of a beautiful rose. Taken in the Albury Botanical Gardens in February 2006.

Well yes, I tend to like a relatively shallow DOF --Fir0002 12:10, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Actually they're not. See Image:Pink rose albury botanical gardens edit02.jpg which has had extreme shadow/highlight applied to demonstrate that there is plenty of detail there. --Fir0002 11:29, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Very well. However I am still opposing because of the small DOF. --Pharaoh Hound (talk) 11:53, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As I mentioned to Moondigger, I'm just wondering how exactly the DOF is affecting the encyclopaedic value of the pic. Is there a vital part of the flower for example blurred? I'm just not seeing how the DOF is spoiling the value of the pic. --Fir0002 12:01, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I just want to be able to see all of the petals clearly. I also find the blurred petal in the foreground a bit distracting. --Pharaoh Hound (talk) 19:24, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Have you looked at it in full res? Mediawiki has a bad habit of losing sharpness when it resizes the image. --Fir0002 22:30, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Uploaded a sharpened version anyway --Fir0002 22:42, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Much better sharpness on the sharpened one (surprise, surprise! so now I support - Adrian Pingstone 10:04, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Background is very noisy, and there's a small creature (an aphid?) on one of the petals at the front left. It's a good photo, though I can't say I find this particular rose particularly attractive - don't like the pale petals with dark rims much. Both the original and to a greater extent, the edit, have major, show-stopping JPEG artefacts in the dark background towards the right hand side. Is my monitor just too bright? They look really awful to me. Stevage 23:09, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I personally can't see anything in the shadows, but I've uploaded an edit in which I've "fixed" the problem by clipping the black highlights. Tell me if that helps. --Fir0002 12:01, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting - I'm at work now, on an LCD screen and a different version of FireFox. Can't see the original JPEG artefacts. Will check at home again. Stevage 08:44, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, at home, the second edit is much better. Stevage 05:56, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment That's probably 'cuz he already set the standard so high, not abad thing IMO.Nnfolz 04:52, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your comment Staxringold, I was beginning to wonder if I was the only one who'd noticed that. And I dont follow your logic Nnfolz, as I can't see why an otherwise featurable image should be opposed because it is "not one of your [the photographer's] best". AFAIK that's not a criteria to judge FPC on. Not to mention the fact that it has the net result of disheartening the photographer. --Fir0002 11:29, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Whoa! Hold it there, I meant that as a compliment. The reason for my oppose is not that it isn't your best work. It's just that I agree with Pharaoh Hound (talk) and i too would like to see all the petals clearly.Nnfolz 19:46, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Joe I 08:45, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. A nice artsy image, but I think it would have more encyclopedic value if it had more DOF. Also, there's a difference between "white" and "blown." (Blown highlights contain no image data, or image data in only one or two of the three color channels. There is no separation between two of the petals near the center of the blossom.) This is one of the more attractive images on the Rose article, but doesn't quite make it over the featured picture 'hump' for me. -- moondigger 13:55, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just out of curiosity/interest to improve, in what way would a deeper DOF have improved the encyclopaedic value? Like is there anything missing as it is? Not sure what you mean by "There is no separation between two of the petals near the center of the blossom". Also, if you look at the histogram, it's actually pretty good (see [[:Image:Pink rose albury botanical gardens edit blown.jpg|this) Also "white" areas are not blown, but are just that, white. See Image:Pink rose albury botanical gardens edit02.jpg which has had extreme shadow/highlight applied to demonstrate that there is plenty of detail there. --Fir0002 11:29, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Fir, don't be disheartened. Besides having more FPs than anybody else here, I'd dare say your images that aren't featured are better than many that are. I believe that good images can be valuable to articles without having that small something extra that makes them FP material.
That said, let me address the specific questions you asked me. An image that shows the entire subject sharp (deep DOF and correct focus) is more encyclopedic than one of the same subject with shallow DOF, simply because the entire subject is sharp. That doesn't mean it's more aesthetically pleasing; many flowers look more attractive if part is in focus and part is slightly soft, outside the DOF. However, information/detail is lost in those areas, making it slightly less useful as a reference in an encyclopedia than one that shows all parts of the subject sharp.
Near the center of the flower two petals seem to be melded into one due to both being (nearly) blown out; there's no (or very little) separation between them. Blown areas need not have a 255,255,255 value; they can technically be "blown" if one or more color channels are now or previously were at 255 prior to being darkened later. It looks like that happened to a few small places in this image. If I'm wrong and that didn't happen, it is nonetheless the case that certain areas look that way to me. In any case don't take my comments too harshly; I'm kind of a stickler and I don't think I'm any harsher when evaluating your images than anybody else's. Besides, mine is only one vote. -- moondigger 21:06, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that diversity of FPCs is to be encouraged (although the current selection is doing pretty well on that account) but with 250,000+ species of flowering plants and unknown millions of subspecies and cultivated varieties, Wikipedia has a big task ahead to document even a fraction of these, and photographers who help with this effort should be encouraged, whilst of course having their photos subject to constructive criticism like everything at Wikipedia . This picture, beyond being "just another flower picture" has particular encyclopedic value because the name of the plant cultivar is identified and its location, within a recognised and publicly accessible botanic collection (i.e. Albury Botanic Gardens) is also identified. One small improvement to its value would be to add the date it was taken to the summary on the image page.--Melburnian 06:05, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Melburnian, that's pretty poor reasoning Dschwen. I mean simply because it falls into the category of so called "coffee table illustrations" does not make it illegible for FP status. "Just another flower picture", try at least come close to objective criticism. Also, AFAIK there is no limit to the number of FP's wikipedia can sustain. --Fir0002 07:30, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Again you bring up that pointless no-limit argument (understandable, if your sole goal is to get as many self noms as possible featured). Pointless since nowhere I want to impose a limit on FPs, I just want the crossection of FPs be as diverse as the encyclopedia itself. FPs will reflect back on Wikipedia, and if people only stumble across pictures of sunsets, clouds and flowers what impression will that leave? --Dschwen 00:23, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What are you talking about? What's with the "again"!? It's the first time I've mentioned it. And lets examine WP:WFP?, hmm? Be of high quality, be of a high resolution, be Wikipedia's best work, have a free license, add value to an article, be accurate, be pleasing to the eye, have a good caption, neutral. What?! No "must-be-the-only-FP-of-this-subject"?! No "must-not-be-coffeetable-style-subject"?! Can't be! Whoops, Dschwen, I think you've made a mistake! If you want to make personal attacks like "your sole goal is to get as many self noms as possible featured" either restrain yourself or do it on my talk page. Stick to actually analyzing the image on FPC. FYI, my personal goal is not to get as many self noms featured as possible, it's to provide half decent images to the project and actually do something constructive. --Fir0002 08:27, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question: I'm no rose expert but I was wondering about the identification of "Cajun Sunrise". Doing a brief search of the internet on Google's "pages from Australia" "Cajun Sunrise" gets only 1 hit (a hibiscus) [1] and I can't find it on Australian rose growers websites. On U.S websites it is described as similar to the cultivar Peace [2], a rose cultivar which is common in Australia. Do you have a positive ID from the gardens or elsewhere?--Melburnian 10:53, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I was going to say that it looked very similar to Peace, a Hybrid Tea variety. -- Marumari 13:47, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not promoted Raven4x4x 11:13, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]