Another amazing image from the inauguration, this one a “gigapixel” panorama of such high resolution you can zoom in on the snipers miles away.

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You can also find your coworkers.

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And my favorite picture of Bush and Cheney ever, both of their personalities perfectly captured. Bush looking churlish and arrogant, Cheney looking every inch the Super Villain.

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UPDATE: Here are some details on the making of this image, from the photographer’s blog.

Thanks, Brian

Anthony Hecht is The Stranger's Chief Technology Officer. He owns no monkeys.

64 replies on “Gigapixel Inauguration”

  7. Zounds. That’s a pretty amazing photo.

    The close-up with the Stranger writer looks like a collection of homeless winos, though. The facial hair, the knit caps, the cheap coats, etc.

  12. The snipers look like they are miles away because of the perspective. It’s really only a couple hundred yards at most to the top of the Rayburn House Office Building, where they are posted.

  18. @8: If I had known a photograph like this would have been taken, I would have dressed up in a red and white striped outfit with glasses and a cane just to make it happen.

  23. I just spent ten minutes zooming around this thing lookin’ at everyone, and I have to hand it to Michelle Obama. Other people are swaddled head to toe in polartec fleece so you there’s nothing to indicate that they are animate objects and not just people-shaped outerwear…and Michelle is in nylons. Nylons! No socks, no hat, no scarf – and she looks totally comfortable. I fucking love her.

  26. What I want to see is the full-res version of the top-down satellite picture of the Mall. Because, I’m curious just how tight those images from space can be (which I’m sure is classified).

    Recognize faces? Read license plates? Watch what number someone is dialing on their cell phone?

  29. Who is the guy covered in vines? Enquiring minds want to know! They should have one of those DC Comics number-in-silhouette deals to tell us who some of these people are and how the heck they got there. Lotsa cowboy hats. Supwitdat?

  34. Everybody may be looking in the wrong place for Tom Hanks. I’m looking back at archives, and Christopher Frizzelle posted the pic from the far-right-third-row perspective, so presumably the picture above is of him, not Eli Sanders, who had Tom Hanks behind him. (Eli’s only description of his position is the “folding chairs section of the Orange Zone, several seats in from the aisle.”)

    That said, I can’t find Tom Hanks anywhere else, and since I don’t know what Eli looks like, I can’t find him for a point of reference either. We should be able to spot P. Diddy about ten rows behind Christopher, though.

  41. I agree with @30 – Cheney looks EXACTLY like Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life. And he’s turned the entire U.S.A. into Pottersville. George Bailey, come back!

  42. @26 – Satellites can’t read license plates, and might recognize your face if you’re looking straight up into the sky, but not likely otherwise. Satellites take pictures straight down. If they were to take them at an angle good enough to read a license plate or see a face, the cameras would have to be thousands of times better resolution, since they’d have to be much farther away and look through a lot more atmosphere.

  45. There is a pair of torso-less legs in the aisle just under (and slightly to the right of) the media tower with all the cameras….

  48. Who decided who gets the bling bling cushy throne-like chairs and who got the folding ones? If you look around the balcony, there are variations of seating quality.

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