Reason

Following the recent (failed) nominations of a couple of wrestling photos I thought a highly active topic on Wikipedia with well over 3,000 articles should have an FP, so picked up a ticket for a rare WWE house show in Melbourne to see what I could get. Well it’s certainly not easy, trying to capture fast action in low light from a considerable distance, through the crowd, and with no option of moving around, getting closer, using a tripod, etc.

I think I did pretty well with these pics. They're something quite unique, and would make a great addition to our sadly lacking sports (and sports entertainment) FPs.

It has high encyclopaedic value as Triple H has been one of the biggest names in wrestling for over a decade (an 11 time World Champion), and is captured here performing his iconic ring entrance pose. Even amongst the hundreds of professional Triple H photos on the official WWE site, IMO there's nothing on his entrance that comes near this.

I’m nominating a multishot sequence taken at 2s intervals which gives a real feel for the darkened arena, strobing coloured lights, and action as my favourite for overall encyclopaedic value. Another option would be to extract just one of these images from the sequence, such as this classic pose, or to go for this closely related image now serving on request in the Triple H infobox.

Personally I think these images have already staked a strong claim for FP status, having elicited compliments, further image requests, and even a barnstar from regular wrestling editors within a couple of days of going into the article – surely this type of reaction is the definition of what an FP should be? And please remember that this is sports action photography, not a portrait.

Proposed caption

Paul Michael Levesque (born July 27 1969) is an American professional wrestler, better known by the ring name Triple H. He currently wrestles for the RAW brand of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE, formerly WWF). Amongst his accomplishments with the WWE, Triple H is an eleven-time World Champion (six-time WWE Champion and a five-time World Heavyweight Champion), five-time WWF Intercontinental Champion, two-time WWF European Champion, and one-time WWF Tag Team Champion. He has also performed in film, television and commercials. He is pictured here at two second intervals performing his iconic ring entrance pose during an international tour in Australia.

Articles this image appears in

Triple H
Professional wrestling
Professional wrestling in Australia

Creator

jjron

• Support as nominator jjron (talk) 14:04, 26 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Support Really nice and encyclopedic sequence.--Mbz1 (talk) 14:25, 26 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Support Great work, it definitely shows something important to the subject. The shots are all quality as well. But don't say "the WWE" in the caption. It's not "the World Wrestling Entertainment." Just "WWE." Tromboneguy0186 (talk) 14:45, 26 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Support Great! Did you get any picture of the water shooting out of his mouth to add to these?Muhammad Mahdi Karim (talk) 14:49, 26 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose Dark and muddled. SilkTork *SilkyTalk 21:35, 26 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. Blurry, varied exposures, individual photos are low resolution. Pstuart84 Talk 22:52, 26 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose sorry but third pic is grainy, uneven lighting, and blurry, we can do better --Hadseys (talk • contribs) 23:01, 26 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose Wow, that does look like a tough situation to get a featured picture out of. I think the combination of photos, however, is just too difficult to look at because of the different lighting situation in each. Also, to get the combo image featured, I think each image should be high resolution, and they aren't. I was hoping to be able to support the "classic pose" individual shot, but it's simply too grainy at full resolution. I wish I could support it, but, despite the real difficulty in creating a good image in that situation and despite how really useful those images are to the articles, I can't support any of them. Enuja (talk) 23:30, 26 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. Blurry, small. The 2nd or last one might be FP material if full size and sharper. --ffroth 02:05, 27 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose because different light is distracting. Would think about supporting a crop of third frame, because of the images power.D-rew (talk) 03:34, 27 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • This was already linked to in the nom. (Does anyone read these things?) --jjron (talk) 11:50, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Support There is no way that such pictures of Triple H's ring entrance be taken in perfect lighting. Per the reasons mentioned in the nomination I support this nomination. H92110 (talk) 11:05, 27 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per D-rew and other opposes. --Janke | Talk 20:25, 27 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per Enuja. Cacophony (talk) 00:56, 28 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Hold on a minute, I don't think this is his "iconic ring entrance". As far as I know, his iconic ring entrance is he gets up in the middle of the ring apron -- equidistant from two turnbucles and directly facing the main TV camera (for televised shows) -- and does a similar move but with a water bottle in his hand and sprays water in the air. That, I would love to see a photo sequance of. This pose up on the turnbuckle is a bit later and I don't know if he always does this. Am I right about this or is my memory just bad? Spebudmak (talk) 04:32, 28 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, that's correct, although I would say that this part of the entrance is always done as well, so it is part of the "iconic ring entrance." Of course, him standing on the stage with the varying light, such as this, is also part of it. Basically, it's one heck of an entrance. Although I would say this four-image set would work better with the waterbottle part you described above. Mshake3 (talk) 17:12, 28 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose This is not FP material. Bad lighting and small pictures. Clegs (talk) 16:36, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. As above, poor lighting. Sorry, Malinaccier (talk • contribs) 23:47, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Support Given the circumstances I doubt you could ever get much better lighting (per H92110); and there are no other major flaws. The reasons given by the nominator are sufficient for me. CillaИ ♦ XC 04:04, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sorry, to get to the point, opposes based on poor lighting are just daft. This is the lighting, and for me to bring a spotlight along to change that would be unencyclopaedic, as well as obviously impossible. To complain of varied exposures (just plain wrong, these were full manual with identical exposures), or of the changing lighting, both probably indicate the nom hasn't been read or comprehended. Images meet resolution requirements and the sequence as a whole is miles above; I have higher res, but that's pretty irrelevant. Of course I suppose some people will just automatically oppose anything wrestling related, regardless, which is rather what I expected. --jjron (talk) 11:10, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • I lightened the image in order so see the water - but there's none... ;-) --Janke | Talk 15:01, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • You could be right; I had an earlier darker, blurrier one where I think he was actually spraying it, but I was waiting for the lighting to get better. I think he may have just finished here going on the angle of his head. --jjron 08:19, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose I agree that the subject needs an FP, this is not it, (yet.) Focusing on a single picture would probably have better effect. I like the Infobox picture, but the shadow across the chest might exclude it. -- RoninBK _{T C} 03:02, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not promoted MER-C 04:20, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]