Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes.Voting period ends on 28 Sep 2014 at 01:49:42 (UTC)
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Featured picture candidates/File:View from Volcano Pacaya, Guatemala.jpgCommons:Featured picture candidates/File:View from Volcano Pacaya, Guatemala.jpg
I know that lens flares are usually not accepted but just checking if the rest of the photo can gain the upper hand. In the worst case, I'm always happy to receive constructive feedbacks. -- Christopher Crouzet (talk) 01:49, 19 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I do not mind the flare. Quite interesting composition and good wow. I think the color noise could be reduced without sacrificing details (as there aren't really that many details). I am wondering if it would work better if you cropped the sky a bit more to follow the rule of thirds? It is pretty, but I am concerned it has too low educational/informational value to be FP. -- Slaunger (talk) 22:34, 19 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
A long discussion about different kinds of value
Thanks Slaunger! I've uploaded a new version with a noise reduction.
I had a look at the sky and to be honest I'm not a big fan of strictly following the rules anymore. For a (fun?) example, as a developer I used to rigidly follow coding conventions to supposedly help laying out my code in a visually consistent/appealing way. This brought me unecessary pain only to realize that the best rule was to apply common sense by adapting to the different scenarios and do what intuitively looked better—no rule can perfectly encompass human's subjectivity :)
That being said, I had a go anyways at aligning the horizon with the bottom line of the thirds rule and it greatly changes the composition for something that I personally don't like. I also tried a 2:1 format that cropped a smaller part of the sky, and it looks ok but I miss that wide sky which brings a peaceful feeling and allows the image to breathe.
As for the educational/informational value, I've read more than once here (from Colin notably) that images on Commons don't need to have an encyclopedic value to be promoted as featured, unlike the rules being followed by en:wp. This discussion seems to come back often—is there no “official” note about whether an encyclopedic value should be enforced or not on Commons?
The crop: My proposal was merely a suggestion to try it out and see if it worked better. I agree, 'the rule of thirds' is not always a good rule to follow, but in surprisingly many cases I find it is a good rule-of-thumb. If you find it does not work in this case. That is fine!
Encyclopedic value: You would never see me decline an image because it lack encyclopedic value, and if you read again that was not what I said either. I wrote "educational/informational" value, which is a broader term and is aligned with our core policy Commons:Project scope. The scope actually does not highlight the fuzzy 'informational' as much as it once did, but prominently states 'educational'. Of course what is meant with educational value is a question very much open for interpretation. Further directions are given in the guidelines for nominating at FPC:
Value – our main goal is to feature most valuable pictures from all others. Pictures should be in some way special, so please be aware that:
almost all sunsets are aesthetically pleasing, and most such pictures are not in essence different from others,
night-shots are pretty but normally more details can be shown on pictures taken at daytime,
Aaah, sorry—educational/informational and encyclopedic values sound a bit the same to me! :) Looking at the discussion and supports for this nomination, I thought it would be OK here as well but no problem if not. Now those terms seem indeed broad—isn't this photo a showcase of the view over the volcanoes Agua and Acatenango that we can get from the volcano Pacaya? Does such photos lose educational value (if any) when not taken during the day? Isn't having variations of a same location taken at different times interesting to showcase the evolution of the light and what to expect?—of course we all know that the golden hours are a bit a cheat for photos, but that's what I'm the most excited to see when I go on a location. And if I had to go to a such spot, I'd like to know if it's better to go for sunrise or sunset, so browsing other photos might be helpful. Anyways, that's just how I seet it, I don't know if this categorizes as educational/informational and no worries if it doesn't get featured because of that. PS: I know the cropping was only a suggestion but I felt like writing :) -- Christopher Crouzet (talk) 12:08, 20 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It is very subjective what one considers as being of educational value and how much weight is given to this in reviews. Of course a view of the peaks Agua and Acatenango is educational if it is clear that is what you see. Since you are shooting into the sun and you thus get a lot of exposure, you at the same time miss all the details of the volcanoes. You only see the contours and for me it was not even clear I was looking at volcanoes. I am not even sure the contours seen are so distinct that it is a "fingerprint" sufficiently precise to see it is from this exact place. Maybe in other mountain ranges you could see something almost similar from the contours alone? As a consequence of that, I do not find the educational value is that large, albeit the photo is very pretty.
I looove shooting photos in the golden hour, and a significant fraction of my FPs are such photos. However, they all (with one exception) have the sun coming in from behind or the side, making it possible to control the dynamic range of the exposure such that it is possible to discern features on the ground and not just contours. This gives value and context - for me. The one exception also has a tough time during the nomination and just barely passed.
Info created/uploaded/nominated by Christopher Crouzet.
Support -- Christopher Crouzet (talk) 01:49, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
Oppose I don't like the lights and the subject --LivioAndronico talk 06:42, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
Comment I do not mind the flare. Quite interesting composition and good wow. I think the color noise could be reduced without sacrificing details (as there aren't really that many details). I am wondering if it would work better if you cropped the sky a bit more to follow the rule of thirds? It is pretty, but I am concerned it has too low educational/informational value to be FP. -- Slaunger (talk) 22:34, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
