I used a telephoto to flatten the crowd and cropped to cut out the dead part of the stadium steps, etc.
I'll admit I get aggravated when photographers stage eight people together and crop tight to make it look like a big crowd, but 80,000 is a heck of a crowd. All they did was record it dramatically.
I agree with you. People here are being overly sensitive, and a casual reader may think we are accusing the AP (falsely) of doctoring the photo by cutting and pasting crowds, or something underhanded like that. The fact remains that it was a bigger crowd than any Republican will get anywhere this year (2008), but still not any indication of what will happen in November.
I'm no Obama supporter, but that's a darned good crowd. I don't think the photographer did anything underhanded or anything. I used a telephoto to flatten the crowd and cropped to cut out the dead part of the stadium steps, etc. I'll admit I get aggravated when photographers stage eight people together and crop tight to make it look like a big crowd, but 80,000 is a heck of a crowd. All they did was record it dramatically.Drama and accuracy are two different animals. If you are trying to sell shots showing lots of people and their team (or voters and their messiah) then you present them in their most favorable light. If you are trying to report ACCURATELY on an event, you don't selectively edit your image to make it appear that it is something it is not. Everyone has an idea of the relative capacity of a stadium. It provides scope and scale to reference a crowd against. A limitless sea of people provides no such scale, no horizons or boundaries. Even in Texas stadiums do not extend to infinity. Nor in Portland do Obama rallies. AP (& the photo editors) are telling a story that is not there. Playing fast & loose with numbers is an old canard (think 'Million Man March') and is a ploy to disillusion opposition. And like negative advertising, it works (sadly). Take a look at the weekend news photo leads and compare those of Obama with those of Clinton. Similar delegates in both states (51 vs. 52, IIRC) and one favors one candidate (by about 12 points) while the other favors the other (by a larger margin). Tell me the coverage is equal. Tell me the pictures coming out of each state are telling the same story. Tell me there is no bias in the people who are deciding which pictures get trotted out as 'objective news'. As for sports photography, I can slap a 300/2.8 on one of the Nikons and create drama too. But one is nothing more than wrasslin, while the other is determining the fate of a nation. Creative editing has no place in the news business.
SOrry - as a native Portlander - I can tell you that where that pic was taken - you can only fit so many people in - it is a semicircular, amphitheatre-like area of the south waterfront called “Riverplace”.
There is an annual Blues Festival held there in the summertime which on a bad day draws far more people than were pictured in the AP images.
I do not know how many were claimed to be in attendance, but it is doubtful there were more than 12,000 to 15,000 there for Obama.
Considering the number of socialist slime inhabiting Portland, I cannot say I am impressed. Not by any of it.
just my “native” input
A.A.C.