Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Tower Bridge

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[edit] Tower Bridge

I created this image of Tower Bridge tonight. I think this may set another personal record for high res panoramas. This image was created from around fifty separate 12.8 megapixel images and stiched together with PTGui. I downsampled it substantially as I'm not sure it needs to be any bigger than it currently is (9462x4734)! Shows the Thames at a very low level due (apparently) to low rainfall this winter. It was unfortunate to have the barge in the shot but they are all over the river at the moment and it is basically impossible to avoid. You need to view at 100% to appreciate the level of detail in this image. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 04:00, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

• Nominate and support. - Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 04:00, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support - Panoramas normally make me feel jaded. Not this one. –Joke 04:19, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose - I don't like the car blur. At full resolution it's very impressive, but the overall composition of it when viewed at a normal size just isn't that striking.--ragesoss 05:59, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support - It is unfortunate that the right bit is chopped off but the rest is so perfect...--Deglr6328 06:26, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support Glaurung 07:16, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose The sharpness at high resolution is magnificent, but apart from this the picture is not outstanding and would hardly get FP status. I think we should stop featuring expensive cameras and software instead of photographic skill and aestetic qualities. Calderwood 07:41, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
  • IMO you're not quite right. After browsing through what imagery is avaliable on the topic on flickr, shutterstock and getty I think Diliff's photo is aestheticaly very good, when beeing 100% illustrative. From the "competition" it seems you can get more impressive "artsy" photo, but in most at the cost of illustrativeness.
  • IMO it's more about invested time and effort than about software. (Though 12.8 megapixel camera and fast computer helps - I envy :-) --Wikimol 00:30, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
• Agreed with Calderwood's comment, but the real problem with this particular image is, as mentioned above, that the right portion is cut off. Oppose. Zafiroblue05 07:47, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support. Looking at all the pics at Tower Bridge, including the huge gallery, this is visually and technically the best. (PS: Always include an article wikilink in the description. I added one.) --Janke | Talk 08:20, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Thanks Janke - just forgot to link it. :) It is virtually impossible to include the entire bridge and still keep the composition pleasing and balanced. I understand people's desire for it to not crop out part of the bridge but it looks rather the same at both ends. :) Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 13:14, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Do you have a version which isn't cropped at the right end? If so can you upload it to compare -- I think I'd prefer that one. chowells 14:50, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
      • Unfortunately not, I didn't even bother to go that far to the right as it just didn't work compositionally. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 15:17, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose, blocky artefacts in sky and right part of bridge cut off. - Mgm|^(talk) 08:58, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support. Let's call it... innovative cropping! ;) - Samsara _contrib ^talk 13:58, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
• Nice. Though the left tower thingy isn't upright, it's tilted slightly clockwise. IMO it could do with some perspective correction by applying some vertical guides to the towers and other vertical bits in PTGui. chowells 14:48, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
  • You're right. I think it is a perspective problem. I may go back some time and try again with a different angle with some of the feedback from here. I'm still not sure I could easily show both sides of the bridge though. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 15:17, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Never mind. Interested in how you took the photos -- was the camera in portrait format and you just shot moving the tripod horizontally? (if you see what I mean) chowells 16:43, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
      • I took them in landscape format. I believe it was around 8 rows wide by 6 columns high, with a few extra segments here and there where necessary to make sure the whole scene was well covered. Its difficult to estimate exactly how many frames will be required as you are guestimating the amount of overlap required, plus there is the added complication of having large amounts of sky which made composing and stitching difficult. I had to make sure there were at least corners of the brige in every shot so that they could all be stitched. So I had to move the camera on the tripod across each row horizontally then move it up horizontally about 50-70% of the height of the row and photograph the next row. To give you an idea of the coverage of each frame in the image, see here[1]. This is a reduced-resolution image (halved in size from 13 megapixel) but contains the full frame of view. Diliff | (Talk)
        • Thanks for the excellent explanation. It must have taken you a long time! Very impressed with your technique, particularly that somehow you managed to get the sky matching up.chowells 13:32, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

(Contribs) 21:09, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

• Support, I like the composition. But, dude, are you touring the world just to shoot pics for wikipedia?! Last month it was canada, before australia, now england. --Dschwen 15:06, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Haha, didn't they tell you? I'm Wikipedia's official photographer! ;) Actually I'm Australian but I just spent the last 2 and a half months in the US/Canada, and now I'm living in London for the next 18 months. Unless I dig something up out of the archives, they'll be UK-related for the near future. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 15:17, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Looking forward to it. Just keep away from Liverpoool, that's mine :) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Chowells (talk • contribs) 16:43, 10 February 2006.
• Oppose - Agree with Calderwood. ^KILO-_LIMA 17:07, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support. Alr 22:20, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
• Slight support. I am not bothered by the cut. The only flaw I see is the blurry car and the ugly white line through it. Could it be edited away? --Bernard Helmstetter 02:02, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
  • PTGui can output a layered photoshop file and there's a tutorial on the PTGui site here [2] which might be able to get rid of it. I personally don't mind the car though. chowells 13:32, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
    • I don't think it's the same kind of problem here. The car is blurry because of the long exposure time, not because it lies between two images. --Bernard Helmstetter 22:27, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
      • Yes. I don't see what that stops it being got rid of in a similar way, assuming the next photo doesn't include the car, which is very likely. chowells 03:17, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. In this case, I prefer an image under daylight conditions, because the object is simply not illuminated enough to be visually appealing at dusk. However, regarding the comment about expensive cameras: Diliff's work is exceptional not simply because he uses expensive equipment, but because he's an expert at stitching panoramas, because he is very thoughtful about the composition of his photos, and because he understands both his camera and the image editing software he uses very well. We should not feature photos because they were taken with expensive cameras, true, but we should not not feature them for that reason either. This is an excellent panorama, though we already have many photos of the Bridge, and I don't see a compelling enough reason to feature this one.--Eloquence* 05:30, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Amen regarding equipment. Expensive equipment does not make you a better photographer, certainly not. But a dSLR gives you a lot of nice advantages such as the ability to change lenses to something more suitable, much lower sensor noise which is invaluable on long exposures, aperture priority mode which is IMO essential for getting an idea how long an exposure needs to be (unless if you have a handheld meter), generally higher megapixel counts as well as lots of other things. We could have a "FPC for Masochists who use cheap cameras and 5 quid tripods" but I think I'd rather stick here. chowells 13:32, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
• Weak support. A very detailed and spectacular image. The only Minor Quibbles that I have are about the right hand side being chopped off, and that I don't like the barge in the foreground, but they're minor issues. enochlau (talk) 15:49, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support. You can even recognize couples on the bridge, and people working in their offices in the back. -- Chris 73 | Talk 17:27, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment: There may be a limit to how much this is a good thing - see Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Geisha (in that case both people pictured apparently consented to having the picture taken). Another interesting and relevant example is mentioned here. Clearly, this Tower Bridge photo is not the same thing, but if, for example, either person in the geisha photo had not consented to the photo being taken, it probably should not have been featured. Similarly, if a photo with a resolution as high as this one happened to reveal an embarrassing personal detail, it might be a good idea not to feature it a) because the personal detail distracts from the rest of the photo or b) as a matter of simple courtesy and respect for other people's privacy. Basically, I find it a little unnerving that we can see into people's offices (even though the fact that the huge windows are left open and the light is left on means that the office holder is not against us being able to see in). zafiroblue05 | Talk 03:31, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support --MattWright (talk) 18:32, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support - I like it. Flcelloguy (A note?) 15:49, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
• Weak ( − ) Oppose Great resolution etc, but as mentioned the side of the bridge is cut and the barge is a distraction. I don't know how to say this without offending, but I can't see how you can take 53 images (and presumably at least 8 on the bottom row) and have the barge only in one part of the image. I mean at 3.2 seconds of exposure, the barge traveling at a reasonable speed the barge should really be in most of the lower part of the image. And if the barge is moving slow, then that will allow you to have enough time to walk to a point where it isn't in the frame. Just a thought --Fir0002 00:48, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
  • The barge in the foreground wasn't moving anywhere. :) It was completely stationary (apart from slight drifting due to the currents - It was anchored down semi-permanently). There really was no other angle that I could see that could avoid it. It seems like the majority of opposers are doing so mainly for compositional reasons but I have a slightly lower resolution (still rather high by any standard) version that I took with fewer segments about 10-15 minutes earlier. I wasn't sure which of the two I prefered to submit, but I guess I'll throw it onto the table for anyone who is interested[3]. The lighting is somewhat different as the sky was brighter and SEEMINGLY the incandescent lights were giving off a cooler spectrum of light (more yellow - perhaps they were still warming up) although this could be a white balance issue instead. I post-processed the two separately. For the record, when you are working with such a big panorama, you don't have a lot of time to wait for boats to pass by necessarily. If you wait, particularly around sunset/dusk, you run the risk of there being a big difference between frames (ie the sky gets darker). Same thing during the day with clouds as I'm sure you've had to grapple with at times. If not the clouds themselves, then the shadow they can cast on the landscape which can mess up the transition between segments. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 04:03, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
    • I like that you got all of the bridge in, but you originally submitted the clearly superior photo. This earlier-in-the-night photo loses the enchantment of the first submission. I know it's a lot to ask, but if you could get the lighting of the original submission and the composition of [4], I think it'd be brilliant... zafiroblue05 | Talk 10:24, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support Very nice pic and a great achievement. I don't think the cut is compositionally important and anyway getting both ends of the bridge in would mean taking it more side-on and that would be less interesting ~ Veledan • Talk 18:03, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support'. The first one. ed g2s • talk 17:10, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support. Great looking Photo. 66.57.87.50 04:55, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

If you want to vote please register first --Fir0002 www 21:19, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

• Support. This vote is almost as exciting as the Olympic Bid selection! Hmmm... 86.135.200.146 01:35, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

If you want to vote please register first --Fir0002 www 21:19, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

• Support Very well done. Photos like this can put pros out of business. Agateller 13:09, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
• Support the second version. I would prefer to support the first, but the entirety of the bridge is not in focus. TomStar81 23:49, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Promoted Image:Tower Bridge London Feb 2006.jpg, although it was a close thing... Raven4x4x 10:06, 24 February 2006 (UTC)