Wikipedia:Picture peer review/Yorkshire Museum

Yorkshire Museum


I think this is a good illustration of the Museum and captures its Greek Revival architecture well.


 * Nominated by: Kaly99 (talk) 21:22, 29 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Comments:
 * This is a photo with a lot of redeeming features and decent encyclopaedic value. Having said that I don't feel it would fare especially well at FPC. The very heavy shadows across the lawn spoil the look at the bottom of the picture, although you have caught it at a time when they're not especially spoiling the building itself (and admittedly the shadows make all that litter strewn about a bit less obvious :-)). It also gives the impression of being tilted, though I don't think it actually is - I suspect it might be that the photo has been taken to the right of centre of the building, so gives a slightly uncomfortable appearance for a 'front on' photo. There's a bit of a perspective problem too, with the sides of the building tilting inwards (something I doubt they do in real life and that may be fixable in Photoshop). There's also some quality issues - to be honest I doubt the sharpness or detail would be quite up to expectations at FPC, and there's definitely noise issues especially visible in the sky (BTW, any idea what that 'UFO' just above the wall at image-left is?). --jjron (talk) 13:48, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Are the sharpness/detail/noise down to the camera setting? If so I'll investigate making adjustments for other photos I take.
 * Out of curiosity I had another look at the walls of the building as the Greek architecture this revival style is inspired by does play with perspective, for example, the columns are a different width at the bottom then the top so as to create a false perspective. I stared at the walls and they seem to lean in, I didn't really believe it so I looked at the other side and compared the wall to the line of the window and they do seem to taper. Unfortunately, the window surrounds (if they are straight) aren't completely straight compared to the edge of the photograph either.
 * The UFO isn't in the other photographs I took at this spot that day and some are only a few seconds after this one. There were a lot of birds around and sometimes hot air balloons do make trips over York (although they're usually red). --Kaly99 (talk) 17:21, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I've examined a close up of the wall I took today and it looks like there are several architectural techniques involving forced perspective being used. I put the picture here in case your interested.


 * I'd say the perspective thing is something to do with the angle you're taking the photo on and perhaps the lens; sure there could be other issues as you suggest, and your image comparing the walls to the window-edge is very interesting, but given that the lampposts at either end of the veranda also lean inwards, as I think do the seats, I feel it would largely be to do with the photo. As you say, the columns themselves are a different story - I wasn't complaining about them. Re the quality issues, I fear it is more to do with the camera than the settings. However do make sure you set it to take the biggest images it can take and try the highest image quality settings. Another useful suggestion is to take the photo somewhere in the mid-range of the zoom, i.e., try taking it where you are neither fully zoomed in nor fully zoomed out because most lenses suffer some problems at the extreme ends of their ranges. I don't actually know the camera in question, but you'd need a pretty good compact to get a good enough image of an object this size to pass at FPC; most of the architecture FPs are taken on DSLRs. A significant number are also stitched rather than single images, which is something you could try as that could help you to capture more detail and do some work to improve the sharpness and noise issues. --jjron (talk) 09:38, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the advice it's really useful especially knowing that some of the issues would only be resolved with a more expensive camera. The information about the angle to take pictures of buildings from and trying half zoom will hopefully improve the quality of the pictures I take for the encyclopaedia. --Kaly99 (talk) 19:18, 1 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Seconder:

