Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Nunâ island Upernavik district 2007-08-09 3.jpg

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[edit] A colony of gulls in Greenland with specialized lichen

Original - Panorama of a cliff in Greenland covered with white bird droppings and orange lichen of the family Teloschistaceae. The cliff, which is the most prominent feature of the uninhabited Nunâ island situated between Upernavik and Aappilattoq extends 270 m above sea level. The lichen are of the genera Caloplaca or Xanthoria and specially adapted to the nutritious environment provided by the bird droppings. The cliff hosts a colony of gulls with a very pale plumage, most likely Iceland Gulls (Larus glaucoides) or Glaucous Gulls (Larus hyperboreus). The panorama is a composite of 17 handheld images taken from a drifting motor-boat and stitched in Hugin. The image is retouched. See the image page for details.
Original - Panorama of a cliff in Greenland covered with white bird droppings and orange lichen of the family Teloschistaceae. The cliff, which is the most prominent feature of the uninhabited Nunâ island situated between Upernavik and Aappilattoq extends 270 m above sea level. The lichen are of the genera Caloplaca or Xanthoria and specially adapted to the nutritious environment provided by the bird droppings. The cliff hosts a colony of gulls with a very pale plumage, most likely Iceland Gulls (Larus glaucoides) or Glaucous Gulls (Larus hyperboreus). The panorama is a composite of 17 handheld images taken from a drifting motor-boat and stitched in Hugin. The image is retouched. See the image page for details.
Reason
I think it is an eye-catching illustration of how specialized lichen (orange areas) can influence the visual appearance of a bird colony. The Teloscistaceae family of lichen is unfortunately not yet described in Wikipedia (I do not have the knowledge needed for writing such an article). As a non-native speaker I would appreciate if obvious grammar errors etc. in the image caption would be corrected
Articles this image appears in
Greenland
Creator
Slaunger (talk)
  • Support as nominator Slaunger (talk) 21:21, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment Very nice image of a rock, but it took me awhile to find the gulls. It does not show them very well at all, and I think most people will hold that against the image. I recommend using the rock as the subject.--HereToHelp (talk to me) 23:20, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
    I think that is a good point, although cliff is probably more precise than rock. I have now restructured the caption such that the cliff and specialized lichen aspect of the image becomes more prominent. -- Slaunger (talk) 06:37, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment. A literal reading of the caption suggests that this 'cliff' (personally it's not what I consider a cliff) is 270m high. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no way the top of this is 270m above the level of the water. Can this be explained properly? Also I'm really struggling to see any more than very minor EV for Greenland, which is the only article it's in. --jjron (talk) 08:23, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
    Thank you for your observations, jjron. The cliff is actually 270 m high and almost vertical, at least according to the official map I have of the area. It may not appear that high in the image due to the projection used in the stitching software. In a normal photo, the DOF would have given a clearer indication of the greatly varying distance from the camera to different areas on the cliff. Here I have taken advantage of stitching many images taken with different focal distance to acheive an apparent DOF which is, I guess, beyond what is possible with a single shot with the smallest aperture. As for the EV for the article Greenland I agree with you that the EV is not so great in that specific context. If that in itself is a showstopper (I am not that familiar with the circuitry here), let me know and i will withdraw the nomination. IMO the image would have been great in an article about the lichen family shown (Teloschistaceae), for which more than 100 different species are officially known according to ITIS. As a non-native speaker I am a little unsure what the formal difference between a cliff and a rock is? Would you be so kind to pinpoint to me what it is in the image which makes you say that the term cliff is sort of a bad match? -- Slaunger (talk) 09:02, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
  • I won't say too much, as I think Diliff has summed it up pretty well. I was tossing up whether it would be better termed a rock-face. On the other hand if it is nearly vertical it may in fact be a cliff as you say, it's just it doesn't look "nearly vertical" here - as Diliff says, it looks rounded. I also based my size perception on both the relative size of the gulls flying above the cliff, and the size of the ripples on the water - a relative comparison to either of those doesn't suggest 270m. I mean, I believe you if you've got good evidence that says this is the height, but I'm just going on how things appear in the photo. Re the EV, that is a personal bugbear of mine, but I wouldn't say it's a "showstopper" as general rule - for a classic example see the voting on this image that's still on this page. In other words don't withdraw just because I say the EV is minor; this is my number one criteria, but my standards with this seem to be higher than many other people's. --jjron (talk) 08:39, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
    I understand your reasoning with the appearance, and that this is important from an enc POV. Quite frankly I am also going thorugh this to get a better understanding of the similarities and disimilarities between COM:FPC and WP:FPC (I think you know why) and I begin to appreciate both aspects. Concerning the perceived appearance, I have tried to go back to the original material and try out other projections. Although some result in an appearance which is slightly more representative of a steep cliff, the improvement is quite marginal. So I guess Diliffs remarks about the too close proximity to the subject is a valid point. -- Slaunger (talk) 15:48, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Perhaps the projection used isn't ideal for an image of this sort, since it is probably important to have a sense of scale for an image of this sort. Preferably, you would have taken the photo from far further back. From my experience it almost never makes a very good panorama when you photograph it from this close, as you simply have to bend everything too much for it to be encyclopaedic. It isn't at all obvious that the image is so distorted and that is a bit of a problem.
As for the difference between a cliff and a rock, without looking at the respective articles to get a textbook definition, I would say that a cliff is a rock formation in which at least one side is vertical or near to vertical, and a rock is a very vague term that describes the many types of mineral in the Earth's surface. I think the reason why there was some confusion about whether the image shows a cliff is simply the result of the panoramic distortion, because the cliff looks rounded, and not vertical.
So to summarise, there is probably some overlap in meaning, but the word cliff is specific and refers to a geological formation, and rock is general and refers to what the Earth's surface is made of. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 13:58, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Hi Diliff. Thank you for your detailed review. I see what you mean concerning the projection. I could go back and restitch it in an equirectangular projection or something like that just to see if that makes it look more realistic and thus EV. It is quite some months ago I made this edit and I recall it as the technically most challenging stitch I have ever made as the photos were taken from a drifting boat (parallax tweaking, too deep to anchor). I think I have used a total of 20 editing hours to achieve what you see (which may as well be indicative of my lack of editing capabilities, lol). Anyway it seems like no reviewers really find the EV is high enough for this image, and if this is the predominant opinion, I think it is probably not worth the effort trying out other projections. Although it seems I have not been able to present the scenary optimally, it was one of the most spectacular and impressive sights in my life. As for a sense of scale there are the flying gulls, but maybe these are not prominent enough in the photo. As for the cliff vs. rock it is now clear to me that it is a cliff, but it apparently looks more like a rock due to the projection. -- Slaunger (talk) 19:08, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Don't see any Encyclopedic value for the Greenland article. Kaldari (talk) 16:48, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
  • "any" EV huh? This is part of Greenland, it illustrates that part of Greenland. That this has a minimum baseline encyclopedic value is indisputable. de Bivort 18:20, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Kaldari. I'll comment on the following question: I don't see anything really special about the certain cliff in the photo. Is the cliff was a major tourist site, or the southernmost point in Greenland (or something else notable)? If yes, I'll reconsider. 2nd edit: If you create a Nunâ Island article and use the image to illustrate it, I would definitely reconsider my vote. SpencerT♦C 11:09, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
    Thank you for your comment. Just to clarify on the notability of the location. It is not a known place at all. It is placed in the middle of nowwhere in a district the size of UK with an accumulated pop of 3000-4000 people. Only locals pass here occasionally going from Upernavik to a nearby settlement and most of these do not even know the name of this place. For me the value of the image is primalily that it is a nice example of the orange specialized lichen of a particular family found in bird colonies in the arctic (the only one available on Commons to my knowledge), and thereafter it is a typical representation of the landscapes you can find in North-western Greenland. Some of the worlds largest bird colonies are found in this area. It seems like I have made a very bad job in writing a caption which graps what this is all about (sigh). (Not your fault, just frustrated by my own lack of ability in explaining what it is all about). -- Slaunger (talk) 11:51, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Weak oppose It's a good quality image and the EV is there ... but the birds flying in the background is a takes a little away from the rest of the image. crassic![talk] 23:42, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
  • The birds add to the EV if anything - it is showing a rookery after all.
  • Support people seem to have a backward understanding of encyclopedic value on this nom. This photo shows what part of greenland looks like. Period. No single photo could capture all of greenland, so being representative is what counts, not whether the site is famous or touristy or any other silliness. de Bivort 02:32, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Come on Debivort, you know better than that. I could take a photo of the footpath outside my house, whack it in the Australia article, and say that's what part of Australia looks like, and presumably you'd then agree that it had good EV. I mean, what I learn about Greenland from this is that there is water and rocks there, as well as some distant lichen and gulls - I reckon I could have guessed all that. As Spencer points out, if there was an article on this location, then EV would be far higher. And as the nominator has said several times, he sees it more as an illustration of the particular lichen, but there's no article for that, thus its use in Greenland. Look, it's a good photo (even if the projection is perhaps not ideal), but I don't look at it and think 'Oh, now I've got a better understanding of what Greenland is like.' There's many places within less than 100km of where I live that don't look too dissimilar to this. --jjron (talk) 08:31, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
      • If your backyard was representative, then yes, it would have high EV. I wouldn't have guessed greenland had large 500 foot rookeries - I assumed it was mostly glacier, so, I, for one, did learn from this photo. What I said isn't incompatible with the idea that if there was a more specific article the photo could have higher EV. It is interestesting to learn that greenland and australia, with their radically different climates can have such similar looking coastlines - goes against conventional wisdom. de Bivort 13:40, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
        • What we anticipate to see when thinking about North-Western Greenland is apparently very much depend on the specific user, which is highly interesting for me. Before I had the possibility to stay there for some months last summer, I must say my idea of the place was quite in line with your initial one, Debivort. I had never anticipated that only 1900 km from the north pole, I would experience such an intense summer, where even at midnight it feels warm. I think a good quality landscape picture of North-western Greenland including gulls and specialized lichen, which are so typical of the area has significant EV. Except for Milas work, I am not aware of other significant contributions at all on Commons, from this geographically enormous area. 1. Its hard to get there, 2. You need some luck with the wheather. -- Slaunger (talk) 21:04, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Support —αἰτίας •discussion• 01:27, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Weak Support. The quality the picture is indisputable and it has at least some Encyclopedic Value. I agree with the other editors on the height-distortion issue, but I do not believe this warrants a full Oppose. NauticaShades 02:24, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Not promoted --jjron (talk) 10:48, 24 April 2008 (UTC)