Huge inauguration photo is like a presidential "Where's Waldo?"

afp/newscom

January 26, 2009

Did you go to the inauguration? Want to see yourself? You can (maybe).

Photographer David Bergman went to the Inauguration and decided to take a photo. A really, really large photo.

The result is fascinating and a serious time-killer. It's like a presidential "Where's Waldo?"

Gigapan imager?

Bergman created a gigantic panoramic image of the Inauguration by putting something called a gigapan imager (a robotic camera mount) on his Canon G10 camera and took 220 images.

He proceeded to stitch the photos together creating a giant panoramic view of the Inauguration. The two-gigabyte image, which he says took his MacBook 6 1/2 hours to process, is online and is very entertaining.

Who can you see?

By playing with the photo (zooming and panning), you can find well-known people watching the Inauguration. Denzel Washington, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, Presidents Clinton, Bush I, Bush II and their first ladies, the Bush twins, Congressman John Lewis, and many more.

Bergman notes that because people moved a bit while the photos were taken, you'll see a glitch or two. But the glitches are pretty funny.

You'll see Aretha Franklin appears to be sitting by an invisible man. There's a woman who appears to have the world's longest finger. Is a grown man sucking his thumb? Check out the guy with four arms. There's another guy who resembles a mutant.

Candid camera

You can spot Yo Yo Ma taking a photo. It looks like Clarence Thomas (at least in this one photo) was sleeping. You can even zoom in to see a hand written joke taped on a railing. Spoiler alert: You can't read the punch line.

Somebody brought Oreo cookies. Someone is dressed up like a tree. You can spot people up in a real tree. Newt Gingrich appears to be irritated at someone who's using her phone. And there are plenty of security folks.

If you attended the Inauguration and can locate where you sat, zoom in and see if you can find yourself.

Lemme see

To check it out, go to the gigapan web site here.

Make sure to use the nav bars at the upper right so you don't have to manually hunt for all of the above photos (plenty of people have already done the hard work of spotting them).