Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Göttingen market place

Göttingen market place


This panoramic picture appears in the Göttingen article and nicely depicts a typical street scene in the pedestrian zone of Göttingen, a small University town in northern germany. I like the picture because it captures a lot things, such as typical buildings, the famous fountain (which freshly baked ph.D's are supposed to kiss), people shopping, a kissing couple, a woman buying flowers, students waiting for their dates. I was lucky with the weather (nice clouds too), but with the bright sunshine comes a broad tonal range: the white buildings straight ahead are a little blown. The picture is composed from over 20 images which also enabled me to compose the scene by selectively blending the frames and influencing where the (moving) people appear. I tried to clear out the immediate area around the camera to obstruct as little of the scenery as possible while still maintaining a lively/busy atmosphere.


 * Self nominate and support. - Dschwen 22:23, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Support any While the image does have some distortion, it is not major. The walls of some buildings are slightly blown out, but in small areas. The dark areas contain good detail. This image is very encyclopedic and depicts it's subject excellently. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 22:41, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Neutral, distortion gives me my doubts. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 02:25, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Weak support. The blown highlights are quite distracting, and I almost want to weak oppose, but I can't get around the fact that this picture shows a lot of different things, such as the various activities going on, the different buildings, and other items mentioned by the nominator. -- Tewy  02:46, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose The tilting is distracting, there is no "wow" factor. a good photo but not the best (which is what a FP is). Hbdragon88 06:27, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose The uneven lighting in addition to the buildings tilting inwards on the right makes this image "lopsided". --Janke | Talk 07:17, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose Neutral Although technically the photo is great I have trouble understanding what your focus is. It's like you are trying to do everything and you ended up doing nothing. -- antilived T 07:55, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * It is intended to be an overview. There are lots of more focussed pictures in the article, but I think both have their own right. --Dschwen 09:29, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * [[Image:Symbol oppose vote.svg|15px]] Oppose Per above. Also I don't really like the composition with the large amount of sky up top and the couple's feet (and the dude in red on the bottom LHS) are cut off. Also is there supposed to be an upward slant on the area of the building with the red crosses (near center of image)? --Fir0002 08:00, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree with you about the composition (too much sky) but I would have to say that yes, there is supposed to be an upward slant on that building. If it were directly in the centre of the frame AND facing parallel to the camera, then it would be straight, but because it is not parallel, the building moves further away from the camera. It is not straight for exactly the same reason that the window ledges on my Radcliffe Camera image were not straight - perspective. Diliff  | (Talk)   (Contribs) 09:55, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Weak Support Original, Support Edit 2. Oppose Edit 1, it just makes it worse. As for the orignal, I don't see what everybody is complaining about. Like Dschwen explained below, distortion is inevitable. Aside from this, the quality is relatively good, and this perfectly captures the town life. "Lack of wow factor" and "lack of focus" are in my mind rather weak arguements. Nautica Shad e  s  08:56, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Weak oppose . It's a shame that the more interesting side of the picture is in shadow: otherwise I like this photo very much. I wonder if someone can rectify that with some Photoshop wizardry? Or maybe the photo could be repeated at a different time of day? Stephen Turner (Talk) 10:47, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Thank you, antilived. Support Edit 2 (oppose Original and Edit 1). Stephen Turner (Talk) 10:30, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Weak oppose. I think its probably easier to be on the judging side than the creating side of a good quality ultra-wide panorama. That said, there are a couple of issues that I have with it. The shadow is of course a major one but cannot easily be helped, short of taking the photo on an overcast day and losing the blue sky. I'm not sure that a polarizer was the best idea either (I'm assuming you used one anyway) as the sky is not even. I might have also picked a slightly different place to take the panorama from (simply from a compositional point of view - I'm not sure what obstacles there are that might prevent it) as the others are right, the extreme curvature of some of the buildings is a little distracting, and could be minimised by being further away from them. Again, I'm not sure if this is possible. Cityscape panoramas are just very difficult to pull off. Diliff  | (Talk)   (Contribs) 11:18, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. But check the location link on google maps, I stepped back as far as I could. There are buildings in the far left which would start to obstruct the city hall if I went further back. --Dschwen 12:21, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Support I'll do the necessary editing in Paint Shop Pro, to make it better. Anyone agree?? --SunStar Net 11:19, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Sure, go ahead and post your results. Nautica Shad e  s  11:23, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I'll have to wait a few days before I can upload the new one to Commons, my account there (commons:User:SunStone) is too new to do re-uploads. SunStar Net 11:48, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Give the alternative version a different filename, such as "Goettingen Marktplatz Oct06 edit1.jpg". Don't overwrite the original. --KFP (talk | contribs) 11:51, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Here it is. I changed the brightness and also the colour intensity on Paint Shop Pro - hopefully it looks better. --SunStar Net 12:22, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Support Original version. I think the sky in Version 2 is too blue - Adrian Pingstone 14:49, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Support original per nom. --KFP (talk | contribs) 17:28, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Support original Towsonu2003 04:09, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment I've uploaded another update which lightened the shadows quite a bit and now is much more visible. I also reduced the contrast a bit as IMHO the original has too high contrast. Would do a higher quality one if a 16 bit original is available. -- antilived T 05:13, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose original, Weak oppose edit 2 - This is a better picture than the original, although IMO the center part seems to have too much light. But the main problem (here I agree with Dilif) is the extreme distortion of the buildings. I really think this is too much - our eyes are not used to see so wide-angle panoramas, both horizontally and vertically. - Alvesgaspar 10:05, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually the field of view of this panorama corresponds pretty much exactly to the FOV of you eyes. --Dschwen 14:02, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * If it is so, you should straighten all lines, like our brain does. Unless this is an artistic view... - Alvesgaspar 16:03, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Check out my comment in the Regensburg nomination. Like our brain does simply is not possible, because our brain creates a 3D impression. --Dschwen 16:31, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * What if we shut one eye, we start to see straight lines as curves?.... Alvesgaspar 23:54, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
 * This is because the retina is curved (a sphere cap). The eye doesn't project on a plane like a camera does. And our brain does the magic of creating the image in our brain then. --Dschwen 07:56, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
 * This is true, you cannot lay a 3d scene onto a flat image without distorting some, ask any mapmaker. A panorama(or any photograph for that matter) always have some distortion, all you can do is hide it as best you can. You see it in major motion pictures even. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 17:15, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * (as a matter of fact I'm a kind of a mapmaker...) The mathematical concept of distortion you are referring to, used in map projections, is only applicable to the transformation of one surface (the surface of a sphere or of a spheroid) into another (in general, a plane). A photograph is a different geometric process since we are projecting directly from a 3D space into a plane using a conical geometric projection. You are of course right by saying that we cannot reproduce the human 3D sensation in a piece of paper. That’s why I think that large (horizontal and vertical) panoramas should be used with parsimony, so that straight lines can be represented as straight, using or not image manipulations, without causing other worse distortions. An urban environment is, for obvious reasons, more sensitive to that kind of problem since we expect the edges of buildings to be straight - Alvesgaspar 17:54, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Just wrong. For any regular camera where the aperture can easily be approximated pointlike, the photo is the projection of the inside of a sphere onto a plane. Haven't you read my comment below? Straight lines are not the only relevant criteria. --Dschwen 18:31, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I was going to say something just like that but I could not articulate it so well. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 19:32, 2 November 2006 (UTC)


 * This panorama is just like all the other ones with this size FOV. It's fine. -Ravedave (help name my baby) 19:11, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Why the heck ar we talking in such small font. Hbdragon88 05:51, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
 * So they don't hear us! HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 05:56, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
 * This is the smallest you can go!!! Muahahahahahaha -- antilived T 07:02, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Bored Wikipedians are pathetic... -- Tewy  13:53, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment I'll take that as a direct insult. :-) | A ndonic O   Talk  21:20, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

--Nautica Shad e  s  17:01, 9 November 2006 (UTC)