Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Image:Tau Emerald inflight.jpg

Tau Emerald in flight[edit]

Reason: This spectacular shot has excellent enc and technical quality. In order to get this shot I had to use my 70-200 with it's rapid autofocus, and the flash was used to freeze the rapidly moving wings. The last image for a while, but certainly not the least. Merry Christmas to everyone on FPC!!
Articles this image appears in: Insect flight, Dragonfly and Flight
Creator: Fir0002

Support as nominator Fir0002 01:16, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
oppose original shows extensive JPEG artifacts along the wings and the tail, the alternative is somewhat blurry. _→AzaToth 01:38, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per AzaToth. —αἰτίας •discussion• 02:06, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Looks like you needed to crop alot so we are seeing some degraded quality, it could just be artifacts from the (slow synced?) flash but the quality's a little sketchy. Do you have any others?? Merry Christmas to you too fir; everyone: happy holidays! -Fcb981^{(talk:contribs)} 03:04, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Umm hello?! Reality check! Have I got more than two perfectly focussed close up images of a dragonfly in flight?! No Fcb, I don't --Fir0002 04:42, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Yes, that does make sense. Seeing as I have 0 perfectly focused pictures of any insect in flight :-\. But There is some kind of artifacting and I think it takes away from the full size quality, IMO -Fcb981^{(talk:contribs)} 13:59, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support original I know the standard is pretty high for insect pictures nowadays, but still...the dragonfly in the image is actually in flight. It has to take some crazy skill to get a sharp, detailed image of such a fast-moving subject. I'm willing to overlook the minor artifacting. CillaИ ♦ XC 03:20, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Very cool that you caught a dragonfly in flight. But what's it showing that you wouldn't see 10 times better if it were perched? —Pengo 05:06, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Well primarily it wouldn't fit into the Insect flight article, but the enc value for a dragonfly article is tremendous as it shows you something you can't see with your eyes - how it uses it's wings for flight. You don't get that from a static perched shot --Fir0002 05:29, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - You don't really get it from a static flying shot either. You'd need a sequence of shots, or an animation to show it. —Pengo 07:06, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - Come on, that's asking a bit much isn't it? This is pretty damn good and as good as you're ever going to get. I'm just still in shock with the reception of this photo, once upon a time such photos were acknowledged for what they are worth. Now I dunno... people just seem to be making up excuses to oppose. --Fir0002 23:21, 24 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      - You're missing the point. You seem to think it should be featured just because it's technically a difficult shot of an encyclopedic support. And yes, technically, it's a good shot. Bravo. Congratulations for catching a dragonfly in mid flight. Now we can have a photo on insect flight. Great. But if you think it's actually illustrating anything more encyclopedic than a resting dragonfly, then you're sadly mistaken. If I wanted to know about how a dragonfly flies then a single frame of flight isn't really telling me much. The hoverflies tells a story by itself that you couldn't catch on the ground, so the unanimous support isn't so surprising, and I would probably support that one myself. When you've nominated as many pictures as you have I'm surprised how personally you take it. I'm not telling you to go out and make a movie of a dragonfly flying, but I am saying that's what you'd need to illustrate its flight. Either that or use a cloud of neutrally buoyant helium-filled soap bubbles and record the airflows in the wake of a dragonfly with stereo photography. That would be truly encyclopedic. :) But seriously. If you really think this is "as good as you're ever going to get" then please just get over yourself. —Pengo 04:18, 25 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        I do not see how you can claim that this isn't an encyclopeadic image when clearly it makes a fine illustration for insect flight and indeed dragonflies. What you are saying is that somehow this image is less encyclopeadic than a shot of it stationary on a branch. How can this be? How can a shot showing interesting and rarely photographed behaviour be less useful to Wikipedia (less encycolpeadic) than an addition to the large gallery of perched shots available in the dragonfly article? You couldn't ask for a more encyclopeadic photo. Beyond the fact that it illustrates insect flight very well, it makes for an excellent illustration of the Tau Emerald, and indeed of a dragonfly (so much so that I've added it to the dragonfly article). Because the remarkable thing about this image is that it has all the features and detail available in a stationary shot, but it also combines this with a rare and specatular view of it in flight - giving it a massive wow factor. Hoverflies mate sitting down on a leaf or perched on a branch, but getting a shot of them doing so in flight is spectacular - the same rationale applies here.
        
        I could only understand your demands for an animation if you'd made the same demands elsewhere. For example here - sure it shows a part of a fuel dump (same as my photo shows a part of a dragonfly's flight) but it doesn't show how long this dump goes for, how the flames are moving etc which you could get from the kind of slow motion movie you want for the dragonfly flight. Same deal for this image, - how long does that cloud stay there for? How does it dissipate? How large does it expand? I'd need a movie. And this, how fast is he moving? How high did he go? What happened next? Even this could be a whole lot more enc if you could somehow slow it down and see how the individual sparks of lighting spread and pulse. What I'm saying is you have to be content with what is possible, not some fantasy.
        
        It is because of my experience on FPC, not despite it, that I'm so aggravated by the response. After three years of nominating, commenting on other images and finding out how other people in the community view other images IMO I have a pretty good understanding of what an FP is. Some of the images I nominate here I'm not so sure about, but some I am. And when I took these dragonfly shots I got a little tingle, because I knew I'd just taken a FP. This image is exactly what an FP should be IMO - and I would defend it whole heartedly whether it was mine or someone elses. When someone looks at say the seal nomination below, they're harldy going to be dazzled by it and go wow I bet that's an FP. But for 99% of the population as soon as they see this shot they'll think wow, that's pretty cool, that looks like an FP. At least that is what I strongly feel --Fir0002 08:57, 25 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        I think you'll find I opposed that fuel dump picture, and for a similar reason: despite it being spectacular, it doesn't have a lot of information content. All your image shows is that a dragonfly has its front wings down while the back ones are up. I'm not saying it's unencyclopedic, just that it's not a lot of extra information content, especially considering the quality is not as high as a still (perched) image could be. What other actual information does it actually add to insect flight? It's information content, not spectacle, that I look for in a FP. Others might give greater weight to spectacular images, but I don't consider it to be of prime importance. I mentioned an animation (or photo showing vorticies) as an example of something that would give real information content to the insect flight article. It was not as a personal request for you to go out and do it. I don't really care if you consider it "possible" with your own equipment. While this photo is a welcome image to insect flight (and whatever other articles it is in) I don't see it giving people any great insight into the subject. —Pengo 12:50, 25 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        <sigh> OK I give up. If you can't or don't want to see the value in this spectacular photo there's nothing else to say. Farewell --Fir0002 01:06, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support original/Edit 1 Per CillianXC. The quality is sharp, the fact that it's in-flight make that all the more commendable.-DMCer (talk) 12:26, 24 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support edit 1, high encylopaedic value and "good enough" technical quality. --Aqwis (talk – contributions) 14:00, 24 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support Edit 1 and strongly urge others to do so as well. With all due respect Pengo, I'm not sure how you can claim that the shot is of only equal or lesser ev than a stationary shot; here, the wings--in flight--are distinctly arranged, with the front and back pairs moving in opposition to each other. Wouldn't the complete motion of flight just be an intuitively obvious interpolation from this still? However, it is the first step--understanding that the four wings on a dragonfly are not all synced together--that is not necessarily obvious; b/c Fir0002's picture shows this, it is perfectly, and highly, encyclopedic. With the initial quality concerns addressed, Fir0002 packs more information into this picture than a still would provide, with minimal to no loss of quality IMO. --Malachirality (talk) 04:33, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Fair enough, but I personally think a line drawing would illustrate that more clearly. —Pengo 06:15, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support either I really like the dragonfly captured in flight. --Mbz1 (talk) 05:44, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support either I think the enc value and the difficulty involved in taking a shot like this more than mitigates the minor technical problems Benjamint 12:11, 28 December 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Benjamint444 (talk • contribs) [reply]
Support all Good composition, very encyclopedic. --Shark face 217 23:42, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted Image:Tau Emerald inflight edit.jpg MER-C 02:14, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]