Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:275 805-0 Köln-Süd 2016-03-17-03.JPG

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File:275 805-0 Köln-Süd 2016-03-17-03.JPG[edit]

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes.Voting period ends on 10 Apr 2016 at 08:17:52 (UTC)
Visit the nomination page to add or modify image notes.

SHORT DESCRIPTION
  • Category: Commons:Featured pictures/Objects
  •  Info created and uploaded by Rolf Heinrich - nominated by User:Ikan Kekek -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:17, 1 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support - This photo has a complex form in which all the elements work in beautiful symbiosis, in my opinion. I really enjoy the diverse lines from the various wires, tracks and other elements, the cheery bright light, the contrasting colors and shapes, and the trees and bushes and contrast between them and the tracks. If this photo were only about the locomotive, it wouldn't be nearly as interesting to me; the shape and colors of the locomotive help, but it's the sum of the parts that really makes this special to me. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:17, 1 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Neutral – I think it's a very beautiful and eye-catching picture. I wonder if the background is a bit too busy and if the subject is focused on enough. The background can definitely be distracting. I'm not entirely sure if the image has a noise issue - I'm not really experienced enough to pick up on that. I think I could be swayed to a support or oppose after seeing a few more people comment on it. ~Mable (chat) 09:39, 1 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
     Comment - In my opinion, the background is not distracting, but instead, is an integral part of a unified composition that the locomotive is a part of. If you'd like a comparison with paintings, this is more akin to a painting of figures in a landscape than to a portrait on a black background; by analogy, the locomotive is perhaps first among equals but is not meant to be the exclusive focus of the viewer's eye any more than the figures in, say, a mythological landscape are expected to be the sole focus of the viewer's eye. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:50, 1 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose In my opinion a background can only be seen as a part of a unified composition if it is somehow topically related to the subject. In this case a suitable background could have been e.g. railway tracks or a railway freight terminal. The background in this case looks too arbitrary for me, and does not help the composition at all. Thus although a good QI, this photo is not FP for me. — Rftblr (talk) 07:30, 2 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  •  reply - The background is what's next to the tracks! So it's obviously related to the tracks and a locomotive on them. Do you feel the same way about paintings? I certainly hope not, but perhaps you don't like a whole lot of great art, or perhaps you feel that photographs cannot possibly be good if they do the same or a very similar thing compositionally to what many great paintings do (I thought, for example, of this work by Pissarro, as it's no less natural for buildings and trees to line a street than for them to be next to the train tracks in a city). The way the different elements interact (or do not interact) to the viewer as part of the form on the picture frame is the only thing that matters for whether the foreground, middleground and background are "related" - not whether they are in some theoretical way "topically related" (because only tracks or a terminal need to be next to a train?) or whether they "distract" the viewer from the "subject". In many cases, the subject is the form; not all artworks are portraits on a black background or the equivalent. I fully understand that people are finding the light too glary, the contrast too great, or simply not feeling a wow - I respect all of that, and apparently need to expect most photographs with bright light to be voted down on this board. But the idea that the different elements in an artwork have to be related in any way other than as a form is a kind of thinking that, however much I respect you for your own art, seems inflexible and wrongheaded to me, in that if I'm reading your meaning correctly, you are deciding beforehand that if you cannot rationalize a "topical relationship" between the "subject" and the "background", the form can't work. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:38, 2 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment I am built way simpler than you infer: If I don't like a background optically, but there is some connection between the subject an background that makes sense to me I might still tolerate it. In this case I don't like it, it just seems arbitrary to me and I just don't see your rationalization of its connection with the subject. — Rftblr (talk) 20:01, 2 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment - Since this thread is still here for now: If you don't like the background in a photo for reasons of form or technique, that of course makes perfect sense to me. I'm not sure I'd go further than that, myself, except to the extent that I tolerate bokeh sometimes while not really liking the bluriness. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:38, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
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