Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/1863 Meeting of Settlers and Maoris at Hawke's Bay, New Zealand.jpg

1863 Meeting of Settlers and Maoris at Hawke's Bay, New Zealand edit

Original - An 1863 meeting between Maoris and settlers in Hawke's Bay Province, New Zealand. This was during the Invasion of the Waikato, and, although the Maoris and setters in this region had always gotten along fairly well, the situation grew somewhat tense, and so this meeting was held to allow them to talk things over, and resulted in a reaffirmation of friendship and peace between the groups.

Reason: I think this is a wonderful image, showing a snapshot of life in New Zealand in 1863, particularly the all-too-rare view of Maori life at that time. A note on restoration: I've attempted to compromise in the restoration between the two possibilities of dealing with the lines between the glued-together woodblocks: I made them less visible, and edited them out as much as possible from important parts of the image such as faces, but allowed some traces of them to remain.
Articles this image appears in: Hawke's Bay Province, Māori, Pā
Creator: M. Jackson

Support as nominator Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 14:27, 3 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Historic, ridiculously high resolution, and as you say, an interesting snapshot of life. Dr. Extreme (talk) 14:47, 3 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Heh, you think this is high resolution, you should've seen my working copy. It was about 8000x6000px, I shrunk it down about 25% a side. to help blend in my restoration. =) Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 14:51, 3 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - I noticed a couple of lines, but they don't detract from the overall image. Would it be completely blasphemous to suggest a reduction in overall resolution? The nature of the woodblock print means that it has to be viewed from some distance--as it is now, you can't really tell what it's supposed to be at full resolution. --jonny-mt 15:34, 3 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Those will be the gaps between the woodblocks I mentioned - removing or not removing them has proven controversial in the past, so I tried to compromise by leaving some traces of them, but removing them from all the important areas. As for a reduction in resolution - well, it's an A3 engraving, and probably needs to be about this size to reproduce well at its original size when printing it. However, you do have a good point, so I've set up some sub-pages to assist viewing. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 15:44, 3 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Defer to others the degree to which woodblocks gaps should be preserved, although I err more on the side of more preservation. I do have a question though; what's with the grey smudges visible in white spaces in the foreground (especially the man's hat on the right)? I would expect the original is just white and full-black from the ink. - Enuja (talk) 05:54, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- I think that's mostly the remains of text-bleedthrough from the other side of the paper, mixed with dirt, smudging from the page pressed against it, etc, etc, etc. - in the end, this was from a very old newspaper, with all the problems that causes. It was much worse before the cleanup, but I probably missed a few spots, as going for perfection is all too often a case of "that way madness lies". And, of course, the final shrinking down from 8250px wide to 6000 px may turn some small black marks into grey itself. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 07:20, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Makes sense. Thanks for the explanation. - Enuja (talk) 20:34, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Good restoration, encyclopedic subject. Durova^Charge! 07:22, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support per Durova. Juliancolton ^{The storm still blows...} 23:39, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support diego_pmc (talk) 07:03, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted Image:1863 Meeting of Settlers and Maoris at Hawke's Bay, New Zealand.jpg MER-C 11:21, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]