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Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Purple rain on roof.jpg

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File:Purple rain on roof.jpg, featured edit

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes.Voting period ends on 22 Jun 2018 at 17:27:34 (UTC)
Visit the nomination page to add or modify image notes.

 
  •   Comment I think this discussion has popped up so many times (even on one of your own noms) that we should know it by now, but here goes: Educational value is not a requirement for FP, see FP General rules # 7 "Remember, the goal of the Wikimedia Commons project is to provide a central repository for free images to be used by all Wikimedia projects, including possible future projects. This is not simply a repository for Wikipedia images, so images should not be judged here on their suitability for that project.". If you look though the PTOY categories, you will find a lot of just artistic images. --Cart (talk) 18:41, 13 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yann: Well, I could argue that there is probably some article that could use a photo of falling rain or that it could illustrate the color mentioned in the file description or a photo article about different filters or to illustrate monochrome images. There are several places where it could have educational value if you insist on an FP needing such, I just didn't think I would have to bring it up since it isn't an issue per previous discussion mentioned above. As long as you have some imagination, there are always articles where a photo can be used. --Cart (talk) 20:40, 13 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • All photos on Commons must have some educational value, otherwise you should open a DR. I do think educational value is a quality we look for at FP, along with technical and artistic qualities. (The requirements mention we seek "valuable pictures" more than just pretty pictures, and this is an educational media repository, so I think it is fairly obvious what we should value). A photo with all three is a winner and a photo that is deficient in one of them inclines one towards negative voting. We all differ in our judgement of these three qualities and having wow in one of them can compensate. What isn't a requirement for FP is encyclopaedic value, which implies the image would be useful to illustrate the lead of an article at Wikipedia, or that the image is itself must be a source of encyclopaedic information. Instead, I think a wide variety of images can be used as illustrations on educational articles, as Cart notes, with a bit of imagination.
However, I do think the meta use of an image to illustrate just that style of photography or processing is the weakest argument for educational purpose. For example, I believe File:Bluebells ICM, Ashridge Estate, 2015.jpg has educational use beyond merely illustrating Intentional camera movement. Another example are the POTY 1st and 3rd prize winning photos File:Glühwendel brennt durch.jpg and File:Glühlampe explodiert.jpg. The former is not used on en Wiki at all, and the latter only to illustrate high speed flash photography. Yet people, including Yann, support these eye-candy photos, and the whole wiki community thought they were the very very finest featured images for two years running. Neither of those light bulb photos illustrates anything realistic, just the artistic imagination and technical talent of the photographer. -- Colin (talk) 08:13, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
To me, these 2 pictures of light bulbs illustrate chemical and/or physical properties. Yes, the setup is artificial, but the result has high educational value to me. Cart's picture is nice, but colored that way, I don't see any EV. Regards, Yann (talk) 14:03, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
So natural or black and white are OK and have EV, but no other colors? Then how about photos like this, no EV? Or sepia or cyanotypes? I'm just trying to find out where the boundaries are. --Cart (talk) 14:18, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
For old images, I always think that black and white is better than sepia, but other disagree. There is an obvious educational value in coloring the Ebola virus, but I don't know the technical details of electronic micro-photography. Regards, Yann (talk) 16:59, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for explaining your standpoint on this. --Cart (talk) 17:27, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think Yann it might be helpful to be less black & white (ha!) about saying there isn't "any EV". I can appreciate that colour toning an image is (a) not to everyone's taste and (b) can limit its usefulness vs a neutral tone. This image assumes people want or are happy with using a purple rain image vs original coloured or neutral b&w where they could apply processing themselves. At least Cart did upload the colour original. We've all seen how someone can wreck a perfectly good photo with too much HDR or sliding the Highlights to -100 or Clarity to +100, etc. The result might rarely be appropriate for some illustration and be tasteful to some people, but not many. So I respect your claim that the processing here may limit the EV, but think it is hard to claim there isn't any EV at all. -- Colin (talk) 20:35, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Thanks! The original is not bad at all and I totally respect yours and Martin's votes. But like so many times, I want to try out new things and see where they lead me/us. At least all versions are there for anyone to use freely and that is most important. Btw, the yellow dots are not leaves but lichen as it says in the text. --Cart (talk) 17:56, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Featured pictures are images from highly skilled photographers and illustrators that the Wikimedia Commons community has chosen as some of the highest quality on the site." As this is an image that does not not reflect reality then it is submitted as an artistic creation 'of the highest quality' and I don't think this is. I will continue to oppose any images that in my opinion do no favours to the Commons FP project. I think it is important that FP images would be rated by those not in our community as being outstanding in their genre, whether it is landscape, interiors, wildlife, sports or whatever. Artistic images have their place of course, but the artistic barrier needs to be as high as the technical barrier is for most nominations. We should make every effort not to devalue the FP award, but it is unfortunately very difficult to guarantee objective voting when many of the voters are also nominators. Perhaps we should be forbidden from voting when we have a live nomination? Would that work for everyone? See talk page. Charles (talk) 21:18, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative - original edit

 

  •   Info Before tensions get any higher here, it might be a good idea to offer the original as an alt. Anything to keep it mellow. --Cart (talk) 21:47, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support --Cart (talk) 21:47, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support Jee 02:40, 15 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support - I support this version, too. I find poetry in it. Not every FP has to hit you over the head with how specially decorated it is or whatever. Beauty also lies in simplicity, when done right. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:04, 15 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support --Martin Falbisoner (talk) 05:25, 15 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose Cart has a great eye for patterns, but for some reason, I don't feel totally comfortable looking at this picture. The picture seems imbalanced and the composition seems haphazard... the strong diagonal lines are neither parallel patterns, nor do they converge in a meaningful way. The raindrops seem to be distributed nonuniformly, with fewer around the bottom-right-most line. The depth of field seems insufficient, leading to only a narrow horizontal band that is sharp; but the out-of-focus areas aren't blurry enough to become an artistic bokeh either. Ultimately the eye wanders around the image looking for detail and is left unsatisfied. As a final straw on the camel: among the yellow particles are scattered throughout the image (which are fine), there's a particularly large clump on the left, visible at thumbnail size, which draws too much attention to itself. dllu (t,c) 06:08, 15 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think dllu's comment sums up the problem with photographing rain very well. When you shoot rain, the weather is always bad. A bit self-evident, but you have bad light and you are dealing with raindrops that are very small and you need detail, so you are left with a narrow selection of ISO and DoF. To get this many splashes in the 1/125 sec (0.008) you have as your timeframe, it must really come down. You might think a normal rain will do but I've tried that and at best you get about 5-7 splashes in the area of your frame. The sound when this rain hit the roof was deafening(!), and it didn't fall uniformly but moved with the wind. Personally, I don't think the non-uniform pattern is a flaw. It makes it look natural, otherwise you could just bring out the garden hose. Rain is something that's available to most of us to photograph but there are reasons why we don't have that many good photos of it here. You can't predict or plan a rain photo unless you are a storm chaser. --Cart (talk) 08:37, 15 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, that is a really good photo, facing about the same problems as I had. I hope he had a waterproof casing for his camera! Even if I was standing in a window, I had to wrap my camera in a towel because of all the splatter. :) --Cart (talk) 09:46, 15 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • The main difference between File:Falling rain in mexico.jpg and Cart's photo is that that photo tells a story with a human element. When a story/scene is sufficiently compelling, even the sloppiest opportunistic snapshot can be an FP. Cart's photo, however, relies entirely on interesting patterns/textures in my opinion, so I hold it at a higher bar for technical and execution quality. Now, I agree with Cart that it's incredibly difficult to take a good photo of natural phenomena like rain, and a lot of it does come down to luck. But certain factors, like focus, framing, and lighting, can be controlled. For the uneven distribution of raindrops, the easiest remedy is to take many, many photos in quick succession, and select the most aesthetic arrangement of raindrops (Cart may have already done this). Since this is an art project, stacking or compositing different frames may not be entirely out of the question either. Also, water droplets in the air against a dark background look really cool [1], but a lot of this can't be seen in this photo because the top half of the image is the same shade of light grey as incoming raindrops --- a problem which may be mitigated by a polarizing filter or directed artificial light for the raindrops. Another possibility is to take this photo from farther away and higher up using a longer focal length, so that the scene appears compressed, allowing us to focus on the texture when all straight lines are nearly parallel and all raindrops are nearly the same size. Conversely, we can also take the photo from close up at a low angle, to isolate a single row of raindrops while rendering other droplets as artistic blurry blobs. We can also use a tilt lens or a camera that supports Scheimpflug movements to get the ground plane entirely in focus. The possibilities are endless, and heavy rain isn't exactly rare (try the monsoon season in Singapore) so I think it should be possible to achieve better execution. dllu (t,c) 09:59, 15 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree totally with what you say (yes, I took and have taken many, many unpublished photos of rain, this is the best so far) and that the possibilities are endless, but in the end it comes down to just one thing: Actually doing it and publish it here. --Cart (talk) 10:16, 15 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Confirmed results:
Result: 13 support, 4 oppose, 2 neutral → featured. /Basile Morin (talk) 22:56, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
This image will be added to the FP gallery: Natural phenomena#Storms
The chosen alternative is: File:Purple_rain_on_roof.jpg
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