Commons:Photography critiques/March 2010

March

Chicoma Mountain in snow

I'm interested in any comments and suggestions on this picture, but especially on the brightness and contrast. On my monitor, it looks okay or maybe a little dark. A friend who's a fine-art photographer and calibrates her monitor showed it to me on hers—it looked light and washed out. On my monitor at work, it will look very dark. How does it look to you? JerryFriedman (talk) 02:03, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

• The quality is very poor: the image is not sharp, probably out of focus, and the brighter parts (the snow) show no detail due to overlighting. The composition is not good either due to the crop of the houses in the foreground. -- Alvesgaspar (talk) 08:43, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. I suspect the blurriness is as much from camera shake as focus—I really should get myself a tripod. Anti-shake and putting the camera on top of my car can only do so much.

I can see detail in the snow (parallel curves, presumably caused by some strange melting effect). Are you saying there should be more?

Would you like the composition better if I cropped out the houses?

And it would still be helpful to me to know how the brightness and contrast look. JerryFriedman (talk) 14:19, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

My screen is calibrated too and the photo looks light and washed out as well. Diti the penguin — 19:07, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Ladder in Moonlight

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Koustav2007 (talk • contribs) 20:00, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

What about it? — Yerpo ^Eh? 12:26, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Oops forgot to add that. My question was regarding the balance of the picture. The subject loosely is the ladder, which is placed rather centrally, would it be better of to shift it to one side? And what about the moon being blocked. It was definitely intentional and it if was not blocked then I'm afraid we'd have had too much light coming in and would have had to restrict the aperture or the exposure time/shutter speed. In both these cases I thing the stars visible would have been not as bright and clear. The main silhouette would have been the same though! Koustav2007 (talk) 16:07, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

The picture as a whole is a bit confusing. You can't really see much of the ladder (which you say is the subject) and the moon looks... kind of trapped there. I like how the starry sky is framed by the walls, though. I suppose you could illustrate a concept like "stairway to heaven" with it, but as for encyclopedic value, this image unfortunately doesn't have much. Sorry to be so vague, but I'm really not sure what to comment here. — Yerpo ^Eh? 21:59, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I like the photo. It is different from much else I see here. I think the composition is rather good, and I do not mind the latter is close to the center, as the two other lines (edge of roof) break the centralized geometry, which overall gives a pretty good composition IMO. The thingie(?) sticking up to the right of the ladder is distracting though IMO and somewhat ruins a very clean, pleasing and artistic composition. I think the way the moon is being cut is good, and I like that stars can be seen as well. Photos here do not have to have large encyclopedic value; they should be informative/educational for Wikimedia projects and also other purposes, see COM:SCOPE, and this one falls well within the scope IMO. --Slaunger (talk) 22:12, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Note that I didn't try to suggest that the photo should be deleted as you imply. — Yerpo ^Eh? 08:05, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

I didn't intent to imply that you thought the photo should be deleted. Sorry, if my comment gave that impression. I merely wanted to point out that the scope for an image does not have to be only encyclopedic value, the scope of Commons is broader than that. I have often been surprised myself of contexts other users have found use for my images. Often those context were new or entirely different to the areas in which I had thought myself that an image could be useful. --Slaunger (talk) 11:09, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, the suggestions were rather helpful, they always are. Will try to keep them in mind and improve . And I completely agree that the thing sticking out is rather distracting. But could not avoid it. And moreover the COM:SCOPE was something I had not read, it's good to learn about it. For future will like to provide pictures which has encyclopaedic value. Even if it is not a compulsory criteria, it will be rather fulfilling. Koustav2007 (talk) 09:06, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Mount St Helens Pano

FP candidature at Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Mount St Helens Summit Pano.jpg

Nice view, but badly warped horizon. As the horizon curve wiggles more than a simple sine curve, there is more to it than a mere misorientation of the output projection. It may be caused by parallax errors in between photos with big foreground part which distort the photo alignment, but my main guess is that inadequate software lies at the root, software that just tugs here and there at the image content.

I do not know what software has been used, but personally I would recommend en:Hugin (software) for the restitch. Of course purchase stitching software exists as well. -- Klaus with K (talk) 10:39, 3 March 2010 (UTC)