Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/european honey bee at work

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European honey bee at work[edit]

A European honey bee extracts nectar from a flower using its proboscis. Tiny hairs covering the bee's body maintain a slight electrostatic charge, causing pollen from the flower's anthers to stick to the bee, allowing for pollination when the bee moves on to another flower.

Honey Bees are very fasonating insects. This is the first image I've put forward as a featured photo. The image appears in the article bee. Having read the FP critera, I believe it includes all the relevant technical merits, and does an excellent job of visually illustrating the bee's role both in gathering necter and in plant pollination. The only flaw I can find is the extremely shallow depth of field, which results in parts of the bee and flower drifting out of focus. However, I would add that every other photo on the bee page (including two that have been selected as FP) has the same problem, which is a nearly unavoidable consequence of extreme close-up photography. I took this photo myself and have released it into the public domain. I look forward to your comments and criticism.

  • Nominate and support. - Severnjc 05:40, 4 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Even though there is already to FPs of bees. -Glaurung 12:30, 4 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak oppose. Well composed. Alas, It's a bit blurrier than I would like, and the DOF is too narrow. THE MOON IS MADE OF CHEESE! --Pharaoh Hound (talk) 12:34, 4 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak oppose. I like it and in isolation I would say it was a good photo but the fact that you used a flash straight-on means the reflections are a bit of a distraction. I don't know if an external flash was used but if so,:HI! bouncing or diffusing it would have helped. Macro photography is a tricky thing to do well and the standards can be high for the 'typical' bug shots. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 14:42, 4 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • There actually was no flash used in this photo -- the highlights you see on the bee (particularly its eye and carapace) are reflections of the sun.Severnjc 15:36, 4 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Then I apologise, they look a lot like flash reflections. Either way, they are a bit distracting though. ;) Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 17:56, 4 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose it's a cool shot, but between the DOF and other blur, it's just not clear at full size. If the whole bee was sharp and in focus, then I'd support. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 19:50, 4 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral. I really like the composition, but the combination of bluriness and DOF put me right in between Weak support and Weak oppose. --Tewy 02:57, 5 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak support Wonderful picture, focus issues. HighInBC 19:32, 6 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I like it, and find it better than most of the existing bee FPs (which incidentally I count as four, not two). THE MOON IS MADE OF CHEESE!!!! :) Can I however suggest that you give your pictures for Wikipedia real filenames rather than this jumble of numbers and letters - it is good practice and makes it somewhat easier to search for. --jjron 14:17, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Sorry about that. The jumble is a VIRN number, the standard convention the military uses to name graphic files. I'll give future files more descriptive names.Severnjc 21:55, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not promoted. howcheng {chat} 18:17, 13 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]