Jump to content

Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Petrified Forest National Park

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 25 Jan 2011 at 00:08:24 (UTC)

Original - The Tepees in Petrified Forest National Park in northeastern Arizona, United States. View is toward the northwest from the main park road. Expanded: The colorful bands represent ancient soil horizons, which are sedimentary and are mainly fluvial (river-deposited). The Petrified Forest Member in which petrified trees are found is the reddish-brown layer, which comprises reddish mudstones and brown sandstone layers. It dates to 213–237 million years ago. During the last 1.8 million years, the Little Colorado River and its tributaries eroded the area, exposing the soil horizons and scattering fossilized forrest fragments throughout the ancient river beds, which are now the dry valley floor. (Source: NPS)
Edit1, cropped This aspect ratio at 429 × 169 pixels has the same area as the above original at 350 × 207 pixels. This crop is also designed to put the invisible distant horizon (not the cliff edge) at the center of picture (as opposed to the original, which has the viewer’s “head tilted back” with the center of the image above the horizon). The colors in the full-size images are exactly identical, although the thumb in the crop here is less saturated (don’t know why).
Reason
High quality, compelling view of the Petrified Forest National Park landscape
Articles in which this image appears
Petrified Forest National Park
FP category for this image
Landscapes
Creator
Finetooth
  • Support as nominator --Elekhh (talk) 00:08, 16 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional (strong) support This photo begs for a more illuminating caption in order to give the (very) pretty picture EV. In banded formations such as this, the fossils clearly wouldn’t be in every type of layer; they would be in (I’m guessing) the reddish-brown layer, or some other layer. The caption should explain in which layer the fossils are found and how erosion has scattered them to the valley floor. Also, a tad too much EV is being sacrificed to include so much of those pretty clouds and deeply saturated sky; the crop should be a tad tighter vertically with all the ground preserved and less sky, which is purely decorative here; which is to say, this landscape—with two peaks left & right—could benefit from more of a “landscape” aspect ratio (now the valley floor). Greg L (talk) 20:42, 16 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I can understand what Greg is saying, but I am also happy to support right now. Very attractive, solid EV. J Milburn (talk) 22:57, 17 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - gorgeous. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 16:56, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional support per Greg, AND I would like to see an alt without the bottom (~10%) that is distracting. Nergaal (talk) 20:22, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes, a tad off the bottom too would be an improvement. I took the liberty of using the provided PDF from the National Park Service to revise the expanded caption. Naturally, I support the expanded caption, which I think gives the photograph extensive and thoroughly sufficient EV. Now I’d just like to see a version of the picture without so much of that sky; as I’m not even seeing a “horsey or ducky” up there, I don’t see the point of including so much sky & clouds. Greg L (talk) 00:19, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

      P.S. Oh… what the heck. I uploaded a cropped version myself. So…

  • Support Edit 1, cropped since issues in my now-struck conditional support are now addressed. Greg L (talk) 01:32, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support either' JJ Harrison (talk) 10:49, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Support original without potentially misleading caption : Thank you for considering the image. It might seem odd that I would oppose promotion for my own photo. In fact, I would be happy to support the original. It is already a featured picture and a quality image on the Commons and has been chosen as Picture of the Day for March 11, 2011. However, the cropped version is washed out, not as nicely proportioned as the original, and removes important context, including parts of the sky and foreground. Furthermore, while the original description could be improved, I'm not convinced that the banded rocks of the Tepees are part of the Petrified Forest Member. Another NPS document says here, "The Blue Mesa Member consists of thick deposits of grey, blue, purple, and green mudstones and minor sandstone beds, the most prominent of which is the Newspaper Rock Sandstone. This unit is best exposed in the Tepees area of the park. The Blue Mesa Member is approximately 220-225 million years old." Are those red bands in The Tepees perhaps the Newspaper Rock Sandstone? I wrote a short description for the original because I didn't want to guess at the facts. Finetooth (talk) 04:38, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Changing to conditional support. Finetooth (talk) 16:39, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted File:The PEFO Tepees.jpg --Makeemlighter (talk) 02:41, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]