Nominees are rated from 1 to 10, where 10 is amazing, 5 is cool, and 1 is unremarkable. Comments are below each image.
Bio: I'm Tlogmer on Wikipedia; I designed the Wikimania logo and I write a wikipedia-themed blog. Away from the LCD, I'm a tech writing student and punk-ish keyboard player. I'm judging Location Photos, Nature Photos, Portrait Photos, Sketches/Artwork, Maps and Diagrams. (Judicial philosophy: Photos should say something complete, draw emotion, and reflect reality.)
Photographs of Places
8 points
The British Museum Reading Room: Awesome colors, amazing sharpness, symetry made overwhelming rather than dull. Single tiny face peeking out at the center of this overwhelming mass of books and papers seems makes the photo a bit droll.
7 points
Filbert Street, North Beach, San Francisco: The light's great. And it's so sharp! Zoom in and you can make out people's faces. Well-composed; looks good from a distance also; makes you feel like you know what the city's like.
Golden Gate Bridge from below at Fort Mason: Wow. Just a great picture. Sharpness, nice composition, emotion, etc.
Another Place: Great shot: sharp, well-composed, etc. The emotional register is so unfamiliar that it's hard to evaluate.
Captain Cook Memorial Fountain and National Library: This isn't a technical tour de force, like the british museum photo, but the subject matter makes it a beautiful shot: it's a memorial to captain Cook. The spare appearance of the memorial (and the spare composition of the photo) reflect the views that cook probably spent most of his life looking at: sky and sea -- in other words, he would have approved of the photo. (This sounds like overanalysis, but it really was a gut emotional reaction to the picture, albiet one I'm not explaining particularly well.)
6 points
Passy Viaduct: The long-exposed traffic light and blue neon, combined with the soft light on the metal, give it a painterly cyberpunky anime look. However, there's not much context: is the pathway usually so empty of people?
5 points
Mount Shasta: Unremarkable when zoomed-out, but it's incredibly detailed: zoom in and you really feel like you're inside this small western town. The pickup truck going through the yellow light furthers the sense of reality.
Hanko, Finland
Less than 5 points
4: Mt Hotham (Kind of cool, nice sense of place, detail); Utah desert; NYC skyline
3: Australian War Memorial (closeup); Kennedy's Hut; Golden Gate (dark)
2: Australian Parliment; Australian War Memorial (full shot); Dinner plain
1: Transamerica; Michigan Avenue; Malk Abbey
Maps and Diagrams
File:Ant worker morphology corrected.svg8: Ant Morphology: A cool glass of water for technical illustration junkies (just me?). Lays out a complex subject with complete clarity. (Look at the subtle color differences between -- say -- the Tergite and the Sternite (in the tail) to get an idea of how much thought went into this.) Prints well. Don't care for the font.
7: Han foreign relations: You can see the real (rather than jurisdictional) outlines of an ancient society, with tendrils percolating off. Nation as organism. (Too bad the image isn't big enough to print well.)
5: Eight Allotropes of Carbon: Nice clear renderings, rotated for your edification.
3: "A chantar" by Comtessa de Dia (long dead): Is this just an ordinary piece of sheet music? (But changing the format would make it unreadable for musicians, and it does look nice.)
Photographs of Nature
I don't have time to lay these out right now.
9: Cows: Through composition and craft, something ordinary becomes beautiful. Good metaphor for wikipedia.9: North American River Otters: Wow.
8
Mandarin.duck: Same reason as for "Cows"
Crepuscular ray sunset: Great composition and colors
Petrified forest log: Even the sky looks ancient in this picture
Telluride Panorama annotated: The hazy blue light is beautiful and the diagram is a cool idea
7
Protonotaria-citrea: I like the burst of yellow over grey.
Vaalankurkku railway bridge: Colors, shadows, sense of depth
6
Day old chick
Orb weaver
Ozyptila praticola
Caerulea3: striking
Cancer cells
View from connors hill panorama
Dawn at swifts creek
Ruppberg Sonnenaufgang
Anvil shaped cumulus panorama
5
Eastern long neck tortoise
alpine range
Rainforest walk national botanical gardens
Litoria phyllochroa
4
Snail
soldier Crab
Gull
Morteratsch glacier
Lassen NP Kings Creek CA
Country house at sunset.jpg
Lower Antelope Canyon
1
Butcher's Creek
Photographs of People
6: Mountaineers descending a mixed slope: the photographer was actually there on the mountain.
5: Dan Schlund, the Rocket Man: Cool getup, but he's playing for the crowd in this photo, so I don't know how much reality there is to his expression.
3: Stephanie Smith, Human Cannonball - Melbourne Show 2005
