(is that obvious enough? lol)

Okay here we go. This is not art. It's hard to make art out of shooting over a million people. It's more documentation of the day as I experienced it. Some shots are not that great of quality so I'm not really looking for critique, but rather just sharing my experience with my forum friends.

Please, as a courtesy to those who do not share your views, let's keep any political commentary out of this thread.

Enjoy.

Just getting started:
The capitol building (from a great distance) decked out for the festivities (I'm sure Mike got a better shot of this with the BIGMA)








Police were brought in from all over to add to the security. These were state troopers from Kentucky.


There are more. A LOT more. I'm posting about 75 or so (so far) to my flickr. I'm going to give Mike, or anyone else who was there, a chance to add to this if they would like.

[Rener]

thank you guys for sharing the wonderful and memorable shots.

cheers,

rene

[mike.hiran]

Great stuff here... just got a chance to watch a few hours of the inauguration today f/ my DVR. Moving stuff; wish I could have been there. That porta-potty village picture is pretty funny... heard it called the "epic septic" with an estimated 70,000 porta-pottys in the vicinity. Thanks for sharing and hope to see more!

[ftpaddict]

Quite a sight to behold. Really amazing footage. Great job, you three.

@ Southy - bring some spare batteries for important events next time. A couple of Lithiums will work great.

[MRRiley]

Thanks Jim, Rene and ftpaddict...

Great stuff here... just got a chance to watch a few hours of the inauguration today f/ my DVR. Moving stuff; wish I could have been there. That porta-potty village picture is pretty funny... heard it called the "epic septic" with an estimated 70,000 porta-pottys in the vicinity. Thanks for sharing and hope to see more!

Thanks vagrant... and btw, it was more like 7000 porta-potties. Either way though, it was supposedly "the largest temporary restroom event in the history of the United States" according to Conrad Harrell of Don's Johns... LOL

Read this interesting article about the porta-potty situation...

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Last edited by MRRiley; 01-25-2009 at 06:50 AM.

[mel]

Yes thanks everyone for the kind comments. This really was the opportunity of lifetime and my thanks also to Mike for putting out a call for crazy people to go in the first place. It was a truly amazing event.

btw, I had heard that the crowd count was about 1.8 million.

[bymy141]

Thanks all for sharing!

- Bert

[MRRiley]

Just found this amazing image of the inauguration. It wasn't shot using a Pentax but its pretty neat.

GigaPan view of Barack Obama's Inauguration

Its a 1.47 gigapixel panoramic view of President Barack Obama's inauguration address that's 194 degrees wide and 80 degrees tall, made up of 220 images by photographer David Bergman, is now posted on Gigapan. You can zoom in using thezoom covtrol in the upper left of the image.

More info about it HERE on The National Press Photographer Association's website.

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Last edited by MRRiley; 01-25-2009 at 12:52 PM.