Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Ford Parkway Bridge

Ford Parkway Bridge

The Ford Parkway Bridge (Intercity Bridge)

This is a picture of the Ford Parkway Bridge (Intercity Bridge) from the Intercity Bridge article. It was taken by User:Jayann.

• Nominate and support. - Jay Ann 00:43, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
• sadly the image has been compressed to hell. why do people do this? really. what's another 2 megabytes?--Deglr6328 07:27, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. Actually I disagree with the previous comments. There are no signs, as far as I can see, that this image has been over-compressed. ~2mb is the typical output size for a 5 megapixel Sony DSC-H1. Check the sample pictures from DPreview here [1]. There are little to no JPEG artifacts. What artifacts are there are mainly due to the fact that this image was taken at ISO 200, which is reasonably high for a P&S digital camera. Typically, the camera will run an internal noise reduction algorithm that degrades detail and I think this is what you may have been refering to. That said, I think its the conversion to black and white that does little for this image. B&W may have some artistic value occasionally, but I don't think it helps an image that is supposed to be describing a current landmark. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 09:38, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. Agree with Diliff. There is no need to use B&W here. The ugly house in the background is also rather distracting. Perspective could also be better, as the bridge cannot be seen completely. Mikeo 12:04, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose It's just some random bridge. And the picture is in black & white -- BWF89 12:57, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
  • It's not the importance of the subject that matters, it's the ability of the picture to illustrate the subject. --BRIAN0918 16:11, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
    • But if the photo doesn't illustrate the subject properly then it is a valid reason for opposing. And I think that the importance of the subject does factor into a vote. A rare and interesting image is going to be judged less harshly because of its significance. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 19:53, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
      • Yes, that is the exception, but we aren't talking about an exceptional case. "It's just some random bridge" alone isn't sufficient grounds for opposition when the subject has its own article. --BRIAN0918 20:30, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
• Support an excelent example of black and white photography. Its sad that most people today lack the apreciation needed to this in a picture. TomStar81 01:19, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. Black and white may add artistic value but reduces encyclopedic value. Among other things, it may misled the viewer into thinking it's an old photo. Redquark 02:31, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
• Neutral I like the b/w too, but I don't like the blown sky highlights. --Fir0002 www 04:15, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose the b&w totally kills it for a modern photo. We tolerate it for old photos - we do not appreciate or encourage it. It's really nice and artistic, but not that helpful for Wikipedia. I agree with comments that the subject is not a problem - it's about how well it illustrates, not what illustrates. Would like to see a colour ver if there is one. Stevage 18:02, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
• Neutral black and white is fine, judging by the obvious noise reduction this picture would likely look like a mess of color noise in color anyways. The purpose of images in Wikipedia is illustrate subjects and the lack of color here doesn't substantially hinder that goal. Many of the images we feature are over oriented towards pretty that their purpose as informative content is substantially hurt, I don't see why we should oppose due to it being black and white. That said, it's a nice picture.. and I'm glad that someone took it. But it's not quite the best of what we have to offer. I hope Jayann contributes more photographs in the future, I'd gladly trade all the pretty pictures we feature here for many more free Wikipedia created illustrations where we have none. --Gmaxwell 21:45, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose - not stunning. --P199 22:08, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose - This is an encyclopedia, not a modern art exhibition. There's no excuse for desaturated images like this one when colored photos are so much more encyclopedic. --Cyde Weys 21:20, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
  • So you'd prefer a image with an artificially inflated saturation which shows colors inaccurately over a black and white image which shows the luminance of the image accurately and with less distracting noise? Many of the images that are features have significantly inaccurate colors. Even if the uploader did not intentionally make color changes, most digicams increase the saturation of well lit images substantially, and even when they don't, getting the correct color rendition requires correcting for the while balance of the overall illumination which cameras do automatically but usually get wrong. Getting proper color rendition is fairly difficult unless you have complete control over illumination, or the opportunity to take measurements.... and of course this is ignoring the vulgarities of the cameras sensor, or your monitor's inability to render all colors that exist... all of which can cause substantial color shifts. And when it comes down to it, images with correct colors are usually pretty boring. I'm not opposed to images which misrepresent, so long as it doesn't interfere with their encyclopedia value. Such images are all around us, they are the norm. The scientific grade measurment photgraph is a rare animal. I am a bit annoyed by the folks here who are opposing this obvious and non-confusing incomplete representation because black and white isn't what the world really looks like, while at the same time supporting images which have been saturation enhanced, dramatically white-balanced, sharpened beyond the inverse of the imaging system's point spread function, and noise reduced at the expense of fine detail that people here consider inconsequential. Sure, you call these things 'enhancements' but they could just as equally be called subtle lies. At least a black and white photo only fails to tell the whole story but never promised anything else, it isn't an outright fabrication. Will we next start rejecting photos because their finite spacial extent fails to include the entire known universe, thus telling us an incomplete story as well? :-/ --Gmaxwell 03:20, 16 May 2006 (UTC) (who has no B&W photos on wikipedia)

• Ok, calm down :) A black and white photo is less *useful* to the encyclopaedia. We don't know the real colour of the bridge - is it brown like the Eiffel Tower, is it gunmetal, is it rusted, is it green? We don't know the colour of the water - blue, green, brown? The banks of the river - grass, dead leaves, snow? You're stretching a bit to see hypocrisy in that we accept images which are slightly tweaked for boldness, while we reject images with no colour whatsoever. No one's asking for complete scientific accuracy, but just a useful image which reperesents a subject well. Lastly, for this specific image, I would find the image more useful again if we could see the entire bridge. As it is, we have lost the parts where it joins the banks, and it's not clear for example how many arches the bridge has. 3? 4? 5? For me, this image adequately illustrates "some bridge over a river", but much less well Intercity Bridge . Stevage 11:33, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

• Comment: When I was putting together the article for Intercity Bridge, I was debating whether to use the black-and-white picture, or whether I should get a color picture. As it turns out, I took some pictures from the St. Paul side and used two of them in the article. More recently, I took a couple pictures from near the water's edge by the lock and dam, and I think one of them might show the bridge in more color (with the trees leafing out in the spring and so on). On the other hand, I'm hesitant to remove the current picture from the article since it's a featured picture candidate -- that would just be bad karma. I'll see if I can find the pictures tonight and put them up for comparison. (Also, the Intercity Bridge isn't "just another bridge" -- it's on the National Register of Historic Places.) --Elkman - ^(talk) 20:20, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Here's the one I took, in color:

    

    The Intercity Bridge taken from the west side of the Ford Dam.

  • Does this do a better job of illustrating the Intercity Bridge article? I'm not sure I would have nominated this one for featured picture status, so I'm not trying to usurp the nomination or anything. --Elkman - ^(talk) 22:47, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
• Neutral per Fir0002. enochlau (talk) 07:20, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Not promoted ~ Veledan • Talk 14:49, 21 May 2006 (UTC)