Reason

Thanks to the Swedish WMF chapter, Commons recently obtained selections of high resolution nineteenth century photography by leading photographers. This would be our first Gustave Le Gray FP, probably made circa 1850 and almost certainly before 1864. Restored version of File:Train station with train and coal depot by Gustave Le Gray.jpg.

Articles this image appears in

Gustave Le Gray

Creator

Gustave Le Gray

• Support as nominator --Durova³¹⁰ 16:38, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Support A photograph has pretty high EV for a key figure in photography history. Staxringold _talk^contribs 16:56, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment What are the lines connecting the trees on the left to the station? Sasata (talk) 19:22, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Those would most likely be telegraph lines. Train stations often doubled as telegraph offices during this period. Durova³¹⁰ 19:25, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support High EV. I'd suggest a placement in History of photography, but that article's pretty full of images already. Sasata (talk) 19:53, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment Wow, I bet you had some fun with that watermark... I'd really like to wholeheartedly support this but I have to say I much prefer the colour and tone of the original upload. Le Gray was a great innovator in his field and I'd be very inclined to accept verbatim whatever survives as a photographic record. The density and overall rich hue of the original is likely due to deliberate chemical toning, for example. Do you have a repaired version without the tonal corrections? --mikaul^talk 21:52, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • File:Train station with train and coal depot by Gustave Le Gray1.tif would fit your bill; edits noted on the file hosting page. Could convert to JPEG if you prefer it. Durova³¹⁰ 22:48, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Great. A jpeg would be better for the article. --mikaul^talk 00:00, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • Done. Durova³¹⁰ 04:17, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Support alt1 Wonderfully atmospheric, a fitting example and worthy FP. --mikaul^talk 08:01, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Question How is the technical quality evaluated in these cases? Is it the quality of the scanning process or the one of the original Le Gray's?  Franklin.vp  01:08, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• I do not find this picture very instructive. Just because it is old and taken by a certain person does not make it especially valuable per se. You can hardly make out anything in the darkish forground. I have no idea if this is how Le Gray intended the picture to look like, or whether the digital representation is just messed up. --Dschwen 20:02, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Re SH & Franklin: as with all scans, we have no evidence that the original image looked exactly like this. However the alt is straight out of the scanner tone-wise, and comes from a good quality source, so I'd be very inclined to accept this as a veracious copy. I'm also fairly sure that the tint here is the result of chemical toning, possibly selenium, based on its distinctive hue and the fact that Le Grey was know to be an early experimenter with image permanence techniques. EV is claimed here solely for Le Grey himself (a highly notable photographer) and is IMO a much better example of his work than the other images in the article. The signature should indicate that Le Grey was sufficiently happy with the image to make it equally notable. As the subject and what you might call literal content of the image isn't at issue here, I'd be looking for image quality, decent reproduction and authenticity, in that order. --mikaul^talk 21:30, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted File:Train station with train and coal depot by Gustave Le Gray1.jpg --jjron (talk) 08:19, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]