Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Rainy Blue Ridge

Clouds breaking up after a rainy morning in the Blue Ridge Mountains

Reason: The greens in the foreground contrasting with the blues in the back make for a very beautiful composition of colour. The image is also very well balanced with the trees nearest in the left, but the mountains highest at the right. A beautiful photograph.
Proposed caption: Clouds breaking up after a rainy morning in the Blue Ridge Mountains. This photograph was taken from Deep Gap overlook in western North Carolina, one of the many scenic lookouts along the Blue Ridge Parkway. The road's construction began in 1935, with some of the work being carried out by New Deal public work agencies after the project's authorisation by congress the following year. Not completed until 52 years later in 1987, the 755 kilometer-long protected landscape runs from the Shenandoah National Park in northwest Virginia to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in southwestern North Carolina.
Articles this image appears in: Blue Ridge Mountains, Blue Ridge Parkway
Creator: Ken Thomas

Support as nominator Djlayton4 | talk | contribs 17:27, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. It's a very beautiful shot, but the whole thing is very artifacted (is that a word?). Ken, the camera you used is 10.1 megapixel... did you try to reduce the file size in Photoshop or something? tiZom_(2¢) 19:50, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, I did crop it and scale it down a bit with The GIMP, but that's not what's responsible for the 'artifacts'. The camera I use is kind of notorious for high noise levels to begin with, and this shot was taken on a dark and overcast day so I had to crank the ISO up a few notches, which only made the noise worse. As much as I'm fond of the image, and as much as I appreciate Djlayton's nomination of it, this is not one I would normally support for Featured picture designation simply because of the lack of quality - especially when viewed at full resolution. 'Card 23:11, 2 December 2007 (UTC) (BTW, I'm the guy who took the image and uploaded it to Commons - I just got stuck with a different username on Commons than I have on Wikipedia.)[reply]

But you should never (ok, rarely) have to up the ISO in the middle of the day, even if it is overcast. Far better to hold the camera extra still than to take the 'lazy' option and up the ISO, inevitably lowering the image quality unnecessarily (particularly with a camera like this, DSLRs are more forgiving). Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 07:10, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. I do like the view, but the image quality is simply too poor and artifacted. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 07:10, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hugely Oppose The whole image is interlaced with errors. Looks like it was scaled up using some kind of algorithm. Definitly not wiki material. Teque5 (talk) 02:59, 7 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not promoted MER-C 04:11, 8 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]