Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Robert Gates

Robert Gates

 * Reason:Oustanding technicals of a portrait of a notable current figure.
 * Articles this image appears in:Robert Gates there are others as well but their EV is more temporal.
 * Creator:Monica King, United States Army


 * Support as nominator --Cowtowner 05:45, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Support per Reagan and Obama note. Staxringold talkcontribs 09:42, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Weak support ordinary composition, good EV, disgustingly sharp --Muhammad (talk) 12:33, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll assume "disgustingly sharp" is a technical term, then?  upstate NYer  01:51, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 *  Weak Support  per what Muhammad said. Nezzadar   [SPEAK]  14:59, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose You know what, it's time to take a stand. FPs really should have WOW. I believe that Silversmith said it best. I think it's even a good idea to thing out the ranks of FPs a bit. Put the WOW back in the majority, even make it a formal requirement. Who's with me? Nezzadar   [SPEAK]  16:10, 4 November 2009 (UTC)


 *  Weak support Oppose not pleased with the lighting, which makes the subject's skin look like he sat down to pose after a three martini lunch. Without regard to political overtones, Reagan's pose is cordial and disarming.  The pursed lips and dead-on gaze here comes across as guarded.  Otherwise superb technicals.  Durova  352 15:22, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Changed per Mikaul, who makes a convincing argument. And I should have had the courage to post this opinion in the first place: portrait photography entails its own unique challenges, two of the most important of which are lighting and engagement with the subject.  Neither is done well here, which goes to show why a great camera is not a substitute for a good photographer.  How hard would it have been to have provided the subject with a disposable razor and shaving cream for the jawline whiskers he missed that morning?  Monica King ought to have known the camera would pick that up, and there was no shortage of White House pages to run to the corner market.  The photographer of Reagan's portrait above had the advantage of working with a subject who had decades of experience with photographers as a successful actor; a shot like this one with a less experienced subject reveals more of the photographer's own talents, and Ms. King obviously failed to put her subject at ease.  Bringing out a good expression in an amateur model is a special photography skill.  When a portrait such as this one can be mistaken for a simple matter of sit, place flag in background, and shoot then it hasn't been done right.  Durova  355 03:37, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. Looks like the make-up person had the day off. Kaldari (talk) 15:28, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment Maybe he didn't want makeup. I know plenty of military men who don't want that. Nezzadar   [SPEAK]  17:09, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I often find they draw the line at frocks and nail polish, but I wear them anyway. mikaultalk 20:56, 2 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Neutral leaning to oppose, but it's so goddam wishy-washy I'm finding it hard to generate the necessary emotions. Oppose Here's a classic on two fronts: high resolution and tack sharp says volumes about the camera, and little to nothing about the photograph; lots of weak supports means it'll eventually get promoted despite no-one really getting excited about it. This is why I hate vote counting on the one hand and think FPs should always arrest the viewer in some respect, on the other. Either the subject itself or the lighting, technique, concept or whatever really should provoke more than a passing glance. Come the revolution, this one will be first against the wall. mikaultalk 20:54, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * There is no denying that this is not an artistically outstanding composition. That's more or less born of the official nature of the portrait. The compositions have been standardized over a period of time, the DoD flag is on the right, the American flag is on the left, the Secretary is in the middle. Check the official portraits for the past 6 SoDs (there's a nice acronym), you may find more FP material there but you'll see that they're all effectively the same. &#91;&#91;Cowtowner&#93;&#93; (talk) 02:11, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Well a bit of artistry is always nice, but that's not really what I was getting at. No, quite apart from being incredibly dull, wooden and lifeless, it simply fails to tell me anything about the character of the subject, which (among other things) means it is seriously lacking in EV. This is in stark contrast to the Reagan portait (above) that speaks volumes about its subject; if that's not obvious enough, a similar contrast can be drawn between this successful Obama nomination and this recently failed one. High resolution public domain official portraits abound on US government servers of which a very small minority manage to be marginally more interesting than passport photographs, and a couple of that small minority might even be worth featuring. Surely we aren't going to promote every stiff, expressionless mugshot on the DoD website on the basis that it's big and sharp and "standardised"? No pun intended, but I had rather hoped those Obama nominations had set a good, rational precedent. --mikaultalk 11:04, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * What does it tell us? He's opted for no makeup. He's opted not to show his teeth. He's opted for a dark suit, a small knot in his tie. He has a very precise parting, and a serious look on his face. As I said below, I don't know who this is, but I feel I could guess a lot about him. J Milburn (talk) 12:07, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Re Mick, I suspect that is largely the way FPC is going. --jjron (talk) 12:35, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Unless I'm misunderstanding what Mick is saying (which seems entirely possible) that sounds like a pretty good way for FPC to be going. J Milburn (talk) 12:56, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * A pack of bland interchangeable images whose FP 'qualities' are more about the equipment used to make them than about their subject. Yep, that's what we're after... --jjron (talk) 13:30, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * This is a featured picture first and formost because it illustrates our article on the subject. Put me in the same suit in front of the same camera and you don't have a featured picture; you have a disturbingly high resolution picture of some bloke. J Milburn (talk) 13:32, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Artistry of a shot does not make something an FP. Technical standards is WP:FP? criteria #1. I suppose you could read artistry into the part of criteria three calling for it to be "compelling", but right below that it reads "A featured picture is not always required to be aesthetically pleasing." Van Gogh's The Starry Night has giant EV for Van Gogh and for illustrating the painting, but if it was an otherwise NN painting and painter it wouldn't be an FP quality pic for the stars. This is why, despite probably supporting 90% of Durova's work, I opposed Durova's Black Panther nom. It does basically nothing to display the Black Panther party, it's just a picture of a black guy in front of the Lincoln Memorial. There is artistic value, for sure, but other than an unreadable button (which looks like a BP button) there is absolutely no display of the Panthers in the image. This image is the inverse of that, absolutely no artistry, but the crispest and clearest EV to the article at hand. Staxringold talkcontribs 16:39, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Once again, this isn't a concern about aesthetics vs EV, it's an appeal for greater appreciation of what people here used to call the "wow" factor. I'm concerned not only that FPC is becoming a rubber-stamping process for every high-resolution image we can find, but that people are no longer looking for this important compelling factor in our featured images. Are we really still wowed by sharp focus and high resolution? Are our readers? Will our readers be even remotely inclined to click on this image to appreciate those qualities? I very much doubt it. The Panther image, on the other hand, is a poignant illustration of the legacy of the 13th Amendment; you assessment of it as "just a picture" has me baffled, and even more concerned than I was before. Maybe we need an instructive essay on how to "read" an image, which might help people appreciate the fact than some images, like the one at this nomination, really don't speak of anything beyond their face value. mikaultalk 19:21, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Let me just elaborate a bit too. I have no problem with this being used to illustrate the article and it is useful in that regard (sure, we can see what the guy looks like in a big clear photo), but simply doing that doesn't make it an FP, and nor does just being big and sharp make it FP worthy. In terms of the capture it's not too hard to do these - you set up the background, the lighting, the camera on a tripod, put an X where people have to stand or a stool for them, fix the focus right, and then move the people through wholesale; you could knock out a thousand of these images in a day with perfect focus and lighting, and it takes no particular skills to do the actual photography (see it all the time with school photos). Now if that was the case, but they weren't easily available and we had just somehow managed to get one freely licensed, or if they were a rarity, then there could be a reason to tag this as an FP, but it has already been pointed out that these things are plentiful and freely available. So what possible purpose is it serving anyone to tag them all as FPs? Just because they meet the technical criteria? Come on! As Mick points out it just becomes a pointless rubber-stamping process with no evaluation of the actual image required. --jjron (talk) 05:49, 4 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Support. Technically excellent portrait, obviously adding a lot to the article. At this point I'd like to note that some portraits I've nominated have been opposed because the subjects are wearing a little makeup. I can see no reason to oppose this at all, and plenty of reasons to support. I disagree with MIckStephenson, and I feel there is definitely a place for documentary photographs like this. Yeah, I wouldn't want this on a poster, but we're an encyclopedia here... (On an unrelated note, I don't actually know who this is, so if I've made some political statement, it wasn't intentional...) J Milburn (talk) 23:03, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I straight away supported Reagan and not this because, while it looks technically great, there are lots of aesthetic things I don't like about it.  Like the eagle and the lighting.  I was still leaning towards support until I saw this.FP's have to meet a certain quality level, but if they don't have some wow factor, or OMG isn't that amazing or poignant or something, then people aren't going to be interested any more, and we might as well stop voting and pick a couple of people qualified to look at an image and see if it ticks a couple of boxes.-- Silversmith  Hewwo 22:22, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose: Nothing special here. Just another portrait of another secretary, and not a particularly good or engaging portrait, at that.   Mae din \talk 08:18, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose - absolutely nothing exceptional about this.--Avala (talk) 11:13, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose per above (even if he is ultimately responsible for my paycheck).  upstate NYer  03:12, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

--Makeemlighter (talk) 22:33, 9 November 2009 (UTC)