I live in suburb of St. Louis and I can tell you that this picture has been faked. From the arch grounds, where Obama is talking to the hotel in the background and the courthouse, there is a highway and overpass of highway cloverleafs that lead over to E. St. Louis. You don’t even see a street between Obama, the hotel and the courthouse in the picture — definitely photoshopped.
RE: “I live in suburb of St. Louis and I can tell you that this picture has been faked. From the arch grounds, where Obama is talking to the hotel in the background and the courthouse, there is a highway and overpass of highway cloverleafs that lead over to E. St. Louis. You don’t even see a street between Obama, the hotel and the courthouse in the picture — definitely photoshopped.”
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I would love to believe that this is fake — you sure about this???? I thought it looked a tad odd but not being familiar with the area, was not sure.
Here's the picture from the top of the article. Notice the dourthouse in red.
How here's an overhead shot of the same area.
The courthouse is off the picture in the direction of the arrow.
The stage must be at the right hand side of the picture where the red line is.
Where are the 8? lanes of traffic in the top picture that are in the red square in the bottom picture>
OMG! YOU ARE SOOOOOO RIGHT
I pulled it up on Virtual Earth (3D) you will see what it not in the picture. I looked at it from all types of angles.
An Interstate
Memorial Drive
What’s that flag Hanging from?
The picture has be doctored.
I live in the inner-ring and have for a very long time. They probably closed Memorial Drive and went into "Fair" mode. That picture looks like all the ones you see for the fireworks. As a user of Photoshop, I don't think it's faked. The block between the hotels in front of the Old Courthouse is a park. It's Saturday, it's beautiful outside and people went. They probably drew from both sides of the river, JeffCo, maybe even as far as Boone County.
I don't like it, but give credit where credit is due - it was one heck of a stunt.
I don't think so. I have photos roughly from that angle from when I lived up there and took reference shots on those grounds, though I was using a different lens. You can't see the road in mine, either. By the time you get to this spot from the Poplar Street bridge, you've already gotten off the offramp and are on a rather low road headed north towards the handsome Eads Bridge. There wouldn't be any road visible in this picture because the rise the crowd is on blocks the view west. The road would pass just behind the Catholic Old Cathedral on the left side of the photo but behind and below the rise under which the westward expansion museum was built.
The trees go up over the rise but you can see where they end short of the road unseen on the other side. The reflecting pools are on the other side of and well below the trees on either side and they, too, cannot be seen from that angle either.
I remember those trees were planted using a helicopter because the ground was so soggy they feared heavy equipment would ruin the turf and grounds. The arch is built on a bluff where some big Mississippian temple mounds used to be; beneath this spot is the museum. You can see the shadow of the south leg of the arch crossing the crowd; the arch is only 630 feet high so that shadow doesn't go too far this time of day and that gives a better idea of the depth of the crowd than the photo. The tightly packed crowd, while it looks big, is really quite small relative to the entire grounds or relative to what you would see for the VP celebrations which would be ten times that number or more and spread well beyond the boudaries of this photo into Laclede's Landing to the north and to the Poplar street Bridge to the south.
This crowd looks like it fits within the footprint of the museum below. Since the arch's legs are, as I recall, 630 feet apart [the same as its height] that means the crowd fits roughly within that space, so figure how many people you can cram into a 630 ft square. Allowing a square yard to each person you could get 44,000 + people there but they clearly look to be much closer together than that, say a minimum of 2 people per square yard or 88,000 on the low end.
This photo was probably taken with a wide angle lens, which will make distances look more distant than they are but which will tend to enhance crowd scenes without the user having to back up too far.