President -Elect Barack Obama

As I write this, Barack Obama just became President of the United States, even though he has not yet been sworn in. Apparently, it's more a matter of time than of ceremony.

I've had so many emails about the photo above that I decided this would be an appropriate time to post some more pictures from thelope.com's visit to the press section of the October 18, Kansas City Barack Obama campaign rally. I was press and so was blogger Patsy Terrell. Acknowledgment of bloggers is part of the to-the-moment thinking that characterized the Obama campaign.

Here's the original post. The better pictures are in it, these are pretty much the extras.


















Check out the snipers on the roof of the nearby Liberty Memorial, which now serves as part of the WWI Museum.



Here's more of the memorial. The vantage point and distance is the same as the photo at the top of this post; this is just a wide angle (approx 35mm equivalent).



As I look at this crowd, which was estimated at 75,000, I'm not sorry I'm not in DC today. I haven't heard a crowd estimate for the inauguration but I'm watching it on TV and the word "ka-jillion" comes to mind.



Behind Obama is one of the memorial's sphinxes, which are carved with wings hiding their eyes.









This little girl obviously didn't mind being photographed.















This is one of my favorites.



I tend to like shots in which I can see what other people had in their viewfinders. I envy the subject to camera proximity of the person holding up the camera near center, but then, I had Mobility to try different angles from the L-shaped press area behind the VIP area in front of Obama, and the people in the VIP area had almost no mobility at all.