Commons:Featured picture candidates/Image:Saxifraga nivalis close-up trimmed upernavik 2007-07-02.jpg

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Image:Saxifraga nivalis close-up trimmed upernavik 2007-07-02.jpg, not featured[edit]

Flower of Alpine Saxifrage

  •  Info created by Slaunger - uploaded by Slaunger - nominated by Slaunger --Slaunger 21:19, 13 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Info I have contributed with more than 100 photos of more than 30 arctic plant species to Commons. Among those my favorite photo is of this flower of an Alpine Saxifrage (Saxifraga nivalis). I found this individual by coincidence on a steep cliff facing north near Upernavik, Greenland. The Saxifrage family is known as being specially adept at surviving in cracks of cliffs. The particular species shown here is furthermore specially adept at coping with a medium to high arctic oceanic environment. A plant, which exists despite all odds. The flowers are very small and you barely notice them in passing. I estimate the diameter of the flower on the photo was about 6mm. Thus, I have had to crop the image to a resolution which is below the normal 2MP guideline in order to have the subject fill the frame reasonably. The flower is not yet fully developed. There are no other contributions of this species on Commons.
  •  Neutral As creator. --Slaunger 21:19, 13 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Ah!!! Visual caviar... nice... --Tomascastelazo 02:10, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support AKA MBG 08:04, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Merlijn 09:23, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose - Sorry, Slaunger, it is really a very nice picture in thumb size but that is not enough to mitigate the poor resolution and technical flaws, like the low DOF and noise. Most insect pictures have the same kind of problems and still the bar has raised very high for them. Also, the overall sharpness would be a lot better with another exposure choice: lower shutter speed and higher f number - Alvesgaspar 12:06, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    No need to say sorry. I am very much aware of the sub-optimal technical conditions of the photo and the equipment used. I only nominate it because for this particular photo I see a chance that for some users the value and beauty and symmetry could mitigate the technical flaws. And the quality is IMO absolutely top-notch considering the camera used, the small subject, and the conditions (handheld on an overcast day while standing on a slippery cliff). It is by the way not possible for me to manually and independently control the aperture and shutter speed with the particular camera (very amateur-like, I know). Too bad the investment in a much better camera has such a low WAF:-( -- Slaunger 12:34, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment -- Perhaps if the image was not square; perhaps the uncropped version is better in a lot of ways. -- carol 13:20, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
     Info The square image size and centered composition is in this case a deliberate choise of mine, which IMO, match well with the almost perfect three-fold rotational symmetry of the flower. Normally, I avoid (and also oppose) centered compositions as they can seem boring, but in this case I find it justified. The original uncropped photo is, by the way, not available. I usually keep all my originals but in this case I erroneously saved the cropped file under the same file name as the original. -- Slaunger 13:41, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment Of the whole vision of the human eye, only 1% or less is critically focused. That is, of what we see at any given instance, only 1% is in focus. Cover one of your eyes with one hand, and pick a text with 10 point size letters. bring the text to your face to the closest distance before it becomes blurry, that is, to the closest focusing distance. Pick any letter of a word and focus on it. Then, without moving your eye, looking directly at that particular letter, with your peripheral vision look at the letters beside it and you will see that maybe the immediate letters to the left and right will be in focus, but not from the second on. In spanish, this area of critical focus is called the FOVEA. Now, the reason we think we see everything in focus is the result of the brain, not the eye. The camera focuses in two ways, one with the focusnig rack, moving lens elements back and forward, and the other via aperture.
Why this explanation? Well, in this picture the depth of field is in fact shallow in general, but it has several important elements in critical focus, like the pairs of the jelly-like tips, part of the petals and the tips of the yellow whatever they are called in english. The eye moves from criticaclly focused parts to unfocused areas and back to critical focus, centering its attention on the focused elements, coming to rest and appreciating the image as a whole and mentally, in an unconcious manner, completing or focusing the rest of the image in the brain. It is indeed a visual pleasure to look at this image without the need to have to have everythng in focus. This is a zen image. Nice, simple, colorful, delicate, with a flow between focus and unfocused movement. --Tomascastelazo 14:14, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It was an interesting exercise and enlightnening, encouraging remarks. Thank you. -- Slaunger 23:44, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I call them as I sees 'em... ;o) --Tomascastelazo 05:40, 15 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Actually, just for the reasons Tomascastelazo gave, I would almost have opposed this image. Our brain has a very efficient stitcher included, which unlike most stitching software works in 3D. I can focus back and forth through a scene in the ways my visual system suggests, and I will build myself a very sharp representation of whatever object I look at inside my brain. This does not work when my eyes are exploring a 2D image with a shallow focal plane, thus shallow-DOF images do not appear natural to me. However, the the DOF in the image is not catastrophic, especially when it is the only image on commons of this plant (I didn't check, I will trust Slaunger...). ps, while the visual field covered by the fovea may be just 1%, the informational content collected is 'way' more than that - over 50% of the visual cortex gets primary input from foveal receptors, and among other things color vision is severely reduced outside the fovea. --JDrewes 00:56, 16 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • JDrewes Sometimes one one tries to cram a lot into a small paragraph, a lot of things are left unsaid. For me, shallow DOF images work fine, for it helps to focus attention on the subject. In this particular case, if works for me because my eyes rests on a few elements, rich in detail, without having my eye dart from here to there in a hurry... contemplating in an unhurried manner. I focus my attention on those elements, and the rest falls into place unobtrusively. If there is one thing I do not like about digital cameras is the fact that they yield too much DOF. I've adapted a Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm f1.4 lens to my Canon 20D, which becomes a slight telephoto, and I shoot as wide open as I can. I am a shallow man I guess!!!--Tomascastelazo 01:45, 16 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support It's so beautiful / Es muy hermosa --Dtarazona 16:55, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Gracias ;-) -- Slaunger 23:44, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose Ack Alvesgaspar. Dori - Talk 17:58, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose A beautiful picture but Alvesgaspar is right. --MichaelMaggs 17:09, 15 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Beautiful and usable picture and Alvesgaspar is wrong because he gives too much importance to technical analysis (if so a robot could choose the featured pictures !) --B.navez 10:53, 16 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
     Comment I may be shooting myself in the foot with this comment, but I would actually like to say that in my opinion the statements you put forward about Alvesgaspar review is unfair, like stating that "...Alvesgaspar is wrong". If you go through Alves statements he is correct in every one regarding the technical conditions of the photo and the settings on the camera. And with his preferences he just cannot mitigate for those flaws. That is IMO a perfectly sound argument. It is a matter of opinion, not absolute truth. How you cast your vote depends in the end on your knowledge, your cultural background, personal preferences, etc., etc. I certainly do not agree with your analogy of letting a robot choose the featured pictures. I do not consider Alves review robotic. I find them qualified. -- Slaunger 21:18, 16 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
     Comment I agree with B.navez in general terms. Fault can be found in most pictures in this forum and using the criteria that he points out, no picture could survive and could be done strictly in cuantitative terms. In fact, most pictures get selected by qualitative criteria, as well as disqualified. Fair judging must be done considering both aspects, cuantitative and qualitative criteria. Problem here is that the criteria around seems to have been extracted from Alice in Wonderland (sometimes), up is down and down is up. Also, B.navez statement "Alvesgaspar is wrong" is just as valid as "Alvesgaspar is right" per MichaelMaggs. Alvesgaspar himself uses words like "poor resolution" and "technical flaws" that while for him are valid arguments and apparently cuantitative in nature, they really are qualitative statements and with a negative connotation. If we were to ask Alvesgaspar how to measure either "poor resolution" or "technical flaws" first of all, he could not find a measuring scale or instrument applicable to all images and second, it would have to depend on a specific reproduction size, applicable only to this image in particular and its final destination. And it is a beautiful image, even if it has flaws... In spanish there is a saying about women, and think it applies here: "There is no beautiful woman without fault nor ugly one without grace." Grace takes the day. --Tomascastelazo 22:57, 16 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
     Comment Of course what I meant was just I disagree with Alvesgaspar. He is not more wrong than he is right. It is just his opinion, respectable, anyhow technically accurate. But we are not rating photographs, we are featuring pictures, so what is pictured is also very important and making such a shot of Saxifraga nivalis in the wild is not the same than photographing daisies in one's garden. Let's take care of the rarity of the subject and how the picture could be usable (here remarkable to show the typical (but small) characteristics of the family of Saxifragaceae).--B.navez 14:24, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Fair enough. I am glad you passed by to clarify your stance. I, of course agree with your conclusion to support he photo, but I also respect Alves POV. -- Slaunger 16:39, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose per Alvesgaspar. (We're not rating flowers here but photographs) Rocket000 15:53, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support I like it. Basik07 21:55, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support --Lerdsuwa 10:00, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose AS Alvesgaspar. --Karelj 15:33, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Oppose As Alvesgaspar said. Sorry. --TM 10:22, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
result: 7 support, 6 oppose, 1 neutral => not featured. Simonizer 13:34, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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