File talk:Sarah Palin and John McCain in Albuquerque.jpg

i have to admit that due to my suspicions about the fascist, mob and conformism style atmosphere that i imagine happens in political parties, especially the Republicrat two-faction Party in the USA, it took me some time to decide if this photo was real or faked. "democrats for mccain" and "metal heads for mccain" did sound pretty suspicious, but it was the "lipstick-wearing pitbulls for mccain" that tipped the balance :). Or maybe most of the photo is real and just these three signs are inserted with gimp? Congratulations to whoever did it, anyway. Boud (talk) 21:07, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And it wasn't the fact that people would literally have to be nailed to a wall and stacked atop each other to be positioned like that which tipped you off? Or that light sources affect certain members of the crowd but inexplicably not others? - Vianello (talk) 21:09, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

i assumed there were stands at different heights, like in a sports stadium or theatre. As for the lighting, my intuition said that it looked funny, but i couldn't nail down anything specifically. BTW, super-rapid response. :P Boud (talk) 21:16, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just chanced across it in the recent changes. ^^ And they ARE at different heights, yes. The problem is that most of them aren't at different DISTANCES. The stands would need to be stacked practically in a flat wall to ascend as sharply as they appear to. - Vianello (talk) 21:31, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

i guess you mean by the normal law of perspective in a Euclidean space? i agree that the background people's angular sizes don't change very rapidly.
It looks like there's a part of a white horizontal bar-like object, which i'm guessing is part of a stand, to the left (from our point of view) of the fellow with a moustache holding a NOObama poster and with his eyes covered by a flag. BTW, to me, looking at the high res version, i still can't see many lighting problems which i can nail down properly, except that palin+mccain seem a bit out of focus at the top, while the podium under palin's hand is quite sharply focussed, and the background people are mostly quite sharply focussed.
Hmmm. i just realised one thing that i couldn't nail down before: the foreground people (palin, mccain, and the other named people, plus a few immediately around them) all have pinkish skin, while the "whitest" (skin colour) people in the background are rather bronzed - this is clearly a lighting effect. A few colour histograms could do this more objectively.
i had a look at the set of photos by the same author - the "Democrats for McCain" poster is in several photos, and the pink foreground people's skin vs bronze background people's skin seems common to many of them. Also, both foreground and background people are common to many of them - would this photographer really be interested in faking/collaging a whole series of photos? i know that sometimes real (digital) photos i have made myself look faked, due to chances of lighting, shutter speed, or whatever. So i'm not fully convinced either way. i just don't know. i have to admit that i can believe that someone would wave a "lipstick-wearing pitbulls for mccain" poster at a mccain/palin event. Anyway, enough time spent on this. :)
Boud (talk) 22:36, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]