Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/George Washington Carver by Frances Benjamin Johnston

George Washington Carver

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 5 Feb 2016 at 07:40:40 (UTC)

Original – Former slave and acclaimed botanist George Washington Carver.

Reason

Besides the obvious importance of the subject, this is one of a VERY few images from the 19th century/early 20th century in which a dark-skinned black man looks like a dark-skinned black man, which I think is important in itself - the tendency is to overexpose the image, which brings out the shadow detail on their face at the cost of accuracy. Photographer is notable, though there isn't room in her article for the image. On a related subject, it may be this is one of the rare images where we want to promote a crop; I wouldn't say no if that's the consensus.

Articles in which this image appears

George Washington Carver, Iowa State University + 4 lists

FP category for this image

Wikipedia:Featured pictures/People/Science and engineering

Creator

Frances Benjamin Johnston, restored by Adam Cuerden

• Support as nominator – Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 07:40, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
• Support - Motion blur is at an acceptable level for an image this age. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 07:46, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
• Comment - I really would like to see at least a little detail on the shadow side - is it possible, or is the original totally 0% there? --Janke | Talk 09:43, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
  • @Janke: Nothing much. This old version was WAY too light, but it'll give an idea: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/f/f1/20160124205621!George_Washington_Carver_by_Frances_Benjamin_Johnston.jpg - This does presume the LoC scan is competent, but they usually are. As I said, images that show black men with properly dark skin are relatively rare. And - although this is possibly revealing things I shouldn't - we have other images available for seeing the detail, if we're willing to ignore that they're quite clearly overexposed to make that detail available. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 09:48, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
    • @Adam Cuerden: OK, if that old version is a scan of the same original, then something inbetween those two would be best. I neither like the completely detail-less half face, nor the blown-out shirt & cheek. I could try doing a combo of the two files, if no-one else cares to experiment... Thus, Oppose for the time being. --Janke | Talk 12:41, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

We can't change the race of George Washington Carver... That's... incredibly problwematic to our portrayal of history.

That said - commons has been having some weird displlay bugs of late. Can you please download the image and view it in ann off-browser viewer for now? Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 14:59, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

• Comment – Contrast issues in photographing black subjects are well known – particularly when the background also is dark. This pic would have to be lightened to at least some degree to be useful in an encyclopedia, IMO. (I tried it on my own computer, using "fill light," and that seemed to work well. There was no hint of disguising the subject's race/ethnicity.) Sca (talk) 17:42, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose - Lacking facial detail. And nothing to to do with the race of the subject. If I was in the same room I would expect to be able to make out detail on both sides of their face if the room was reasonably well lit. This photo is either poorly lit, under exposed or both, meaning this is not possible. This limits EV and is a reflection of the quality of the image, not an accurate depiction the skin tone of the subject. - Wolftick (talk) 18:53, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
• Very well, Withdraw. I'll swap it with the other restoration and see if it sticks. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 23:57, 26 January 2016 (UTC)