Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Little Joe 1

Little Joe one

When NASA went shopping for a booster to use in the Mercury program they found that the Atlas rockets would cost approximately $2.5 million each and that even the Redstone would cost about $1 million per launching. The managers of the Mercury program recognized from the start that the numerous early test flights would have to be accomplished by a far less expensive booster system. As it turned out, the Little Joe rocket NASA designed, cost about $200,000 each.

Edited version. Cropped at the top to remove excess sky, and also cropped to remove shadow along the right edge, presumably caused by the scan. Also lightened the shadows slightly.

Reason

Very high resolution, encyclopedic, the guy gives the image scale (he really does this time and yes its the same guy from the Soyuz launch!! :P)

Articles this image appears in

Little Joe, Little Joe 1

Creator

NASA

• Support as nominator — A look at NASA's more humble beginnings. Chris H 02:00, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
• Support. The image has some distracting vertical scan line noise that could probably be removed fairly painlessly, but otherwise a good historical record of, as Chris H said, the first steps of the space race. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 07:49, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - Nice shot. Agree with Diliff about the scan lines and I think I'd be inclined to go for a tighter crop, losing some from the top and a bit from the left, where there's nothing going on anyway. Funny to see all these rocket noms all of a sudden, I've just been writing a report about the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project... --YFB ¿ 19:15, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
• Comment It would certaily look better with some delicate post-production work. Extra- historical too, as this would have been the last day that particular assistant worked for this particular photographer ;o) mikaul^talk 23:30, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
• Support I don't see any major technical problems. A little tweaking and cropping per above is all that's needed. Very encyclopedic pic. Jumping cheese ^Cont@ct 21:48, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
• Weak oppose, a lot of noise/contrast and stuff making it kind of a weak image, and nothing really eye catching about it. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 01:23, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
• Comment I added an edited version which removes the excess sky at the top (see thumbnail caption for full details). -Panser Born- (talk) 19:28, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Much better without all the empty space.Chris H 03:11, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Support: Support the original pic. Kalyan 09:19, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

• Weak oppose both versions Mainly per Night Gyr; interesting subject but too many downsides, I find the tones for instance are also somewhat intense. The cropped version is worse than the second given that naturally the eye needs space for the subject to fly! (well maybe not fly, but move in the direction of the subject) It is the same as if you had someone on the right hand-side of a photo also facing the right hand-side. Chris Buttigieg^talk 19:27, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
• Support original Enc makes up for technical qualities. The empty sky is a necessary part of the composition; I think it's called "leadroom" (but I couldn't fid such an article).--HereToHelp 12:06, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, leadroom is a "moving pictures" term, but you're right to mention it in this static context, cos that's precisely what's "wrong" with that crop, IMO. There really should be a page on it; its not even mentioned at Composition (visual arts), although that particular article's been on my copyedit list for a good while.mikaul^talk 18:55, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

I do kind of see what you mean. Chris H 02:07, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

• Support original per HereToHelp above... Check-Six 07:09, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Promoted Image:GPN-2000-001883.jpg --Raven4x4x 04:10, 24 June 2007 (UTC)