Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/West African Gaboon Viper

West African Gaboon Viper edit

Original - A West African Gaboon Viper (Bitis gabonica rhinoceros) in captivity at St Louis Zoo

Reason: Attractive image that both shows you what the snake looks like, and how it hunts using leaf-pattern camouflage. A reflection was removed from the out-of focus background in the top left corner.
Articles this image appears in: Bitis gabonica, Crypsis and Ambush predator.
Creator: User:TimVickers

Support as nominator Tim Vickers (talk) 02:46, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral. I don't know why, but there is something bugging me in this picture. Dengero (talk) 05:11, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Really, I hope people are looking at these at full resolution (not the image page). The quality at full res is rather bad, noisy and there is texture lost everywhere due to in-camera NR. The white balance is green shifted and the tail is badly OOF. The tail is cut off. Other then that, its a compelling shot. What I mean is that it was clearly wide-angle meaning the photographer had to get close to the snake. Like really close. -Fcb981(talk:contribs) 05:25, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- It was taken in a zoo, the photographer says he's edited out a reflection, so I'm guessing he was pretty safely behind glass. :-) --jjron (talk) 08:19, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose A bit blurry, and noisy. · AndonicO ^Hail! 12:46, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose - as per Fcb, horribly blurred, noisy, white balance and general colour off, bad contrast - looks okay at thumbnail but not any bigger. Again as per Fcb, I really don't think that the nominators of most of the recent nominations we've had have actually looked at the image full size, I cite this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this. I don't know how we can make it any more clear that people need to think for more that thirty seconds about whether their image is good enough, to actually read all the criteria all the way through and realise that most of them need to apply, to look at their image full size all over, and to compare their image against others which are currently featured. There have been quite a few nominations in the last three to six months where I've almost dismissed them as a troll nom (anyone remember the real trolls like this? Or the innocent-but-worse ones like this from even longer ago?), and then realised that although the image is bad or worse, the person nominating really did think that it might pass for some reason. I don't understand why the advice and instructions at the top of the page aren't clear enough already. This isn't the worst image we've had by any means, but it still shows that some standards appear to be slipping. —Vanderdecken∴ ∫ξ φ 12:57, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Calling this a troll nomination seems a bit harsh, I do admit I don't have full vision myself, so I probably wasn't able to assess this as well as I should have. The picture was taken at low light levels from behind thick glass, which might explain the flaws you can see. However, in light of the tone of your comments I don't think I will try this process again. Sorry for wasting everybody's time. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:05, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

- - - Please note, I wasn't saying that this nom was a troll, I was commenting that the recent trend of nominations where the quality is obviously low has some examples which, a year ago, would have been suspected as troll nominations. —Vanderdecken∴ ∫ξ φ
Oppose It has all been said above - Adrian Pingstone (talk) 16:45, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose because of the blur. Galileo01 (talk) 16:48, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not promoted --jjron (talk) 10:54, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Note: Image withdrawn by nominator by removing it from FPC page - see here. --jjron (talk) 10:54, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]