Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Auxiliary Territorial Service

Auxiliary Territorial Service women working on a Churchill tank at a Royal Army Ordnance Corps depot[edit]

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 15 Nov 2022 at 08:32:41 (UTC)

Reason: Not the lead image, but high quality, despite a little graininess, and it uniquely illustrates this aspect of the Auxiliary Territorial Service in World War II.
Articles in which this image appears: Auxiliary Territorial Service, Royal Army Ordnance Corps
FP category for this image: Wikipedia:Featured_pictures/History/World_War_II
Creator: Lt. Taylor, War Office official photographer; Restored by Adam Cuerden

Support as nominator – Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.2% of all FPs} 08:32, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support – Every worker in this pic. is female; it's good to show a historical scene of women doing this sort of work. (Suggest the photo also be posted somewhere in the Churchill tank article.) – Sca (talk) 12:32, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Looks pretty staged/posed, but support anyway. --Janke | Talk 13:07, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, staged, but still worth posting. After all, they must have done some kind of work on the tanks. -- Sca (talk) 12:45, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support – Bammesk (talk) 15:28, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support. MER-C 19:07, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I'd want to see evidence that this image accurately depicts working practices to support, as it looks badly posed. The arrangements are plainly grossly unsafe for instance - lowering the turret in while other women are working on the decking immediately next to it seems highly unlikely to be standard practice even by 1940s-era OH&S standards. All of the workers also appear to be wearing spotlessly clean uniforms which also suggests the image is posed - all accounts I've seen of tank maintenance stress it's very messy work. Nick-D (talk) 23:55, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support – I agree that it looks posed, and I think all of Nick's observations are on point. But I don't think a photo like this must be strictly documentary in order to serve its purpose. I'm actually more bothered by the composition, which IMO is weakened by the excessive floor space in the foreground and the distracting observer in the lower right corner. I also wish there was just a little more breathing room to the left and right between the tank and the edges of the photo. I wavered between weak oppose and weak support, but came down on the side of support. Choliamb (talk) 03:54, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Agree it would be good to crop from bottom, but how to deal with observer at right? -- Sca (talk) 12:47, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It probably wouldn't be too difficult to blot her out with the clone stamp tool in Photoshop or some similar tool in another program. The mottled gray floor background is actually well suited to that kind of cover-up work without leaving conspicuous traces. But at what point does this cross the line between restoration and manipulation? I don't have a problem with it in contemporary images when applied by the original photographer (to remove power lines, etc.), but it feels a little more dubious to me in historical documents. Crawdad Blues (talk) 15:44, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Aye. Now, photos being cropped and retouched for publication is hardly a new thing, and I think we can occassionally get a bit too eager to respect original intent that we ignore that cameras have fixed aspect ratios, so working from an original can mean we're including things never meant to be included. There's ways of cropping some of the observer that would still look good, I'm just unsure as to whether we should. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.2% of all FPs} 16:24, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It is already a (tight) crowded frame. Cropping it would make it more so. Personally I prefer keeping the open space on the bottom. Bammesk (talk) 16:42, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That would be OK, too. – Sca (talk) 18:16, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Just to be clear, I wasn't actually suggesting cropping or other additional editing. I was simply explaining that the composition and the crowded frame seem to me less than ideal, and that affects my support for the nomination. Choliamb (talk) 17:34, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Too posed. And the person bottom right intrudes. We should not crop historical photos but judge them as they are (restored where necessary). Charlesjsharp (talk) 10:20, 14 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted File:Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) women working on a Churchill tank at a Royal Army Ordnance Corps depot, 10 October 1942. H24517 - Restoration.jpg --Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 21:42, 15 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]