What TIME were these pictures taken????
Sorry, I missed a chunk of article when I cut and pasted. The missing paragraphs:
"We took a lot of shots under the trees and higher up by just changing the balloon altitude," he said. "So what might have been a negative with an airplane and certainly a negative with a satellite was a very strong position with a balloon."Though there was restricted airspace on the south side of the reflecting pool, airspace was not restricted where the crowd was gathered, allowing the company to position the balloon in "the very center of the crowd - dead in the middle of it," Westergard said.
The photos were taken at noon, which Beck's representatives suggested would be the peak of the event, which ran from 10 AM to slightly after 1 PM. Taking the pictures then meant counting both those who were late to the event because of subway or traffic delays and those who left early to avoid the crowds afterward.
The company generated its own estimate and asked Doig to separately one on his own. Though Doig and AirPhotosLive.com employ slightly different methodologies, both use a method that involves laying grids over the high-resolution images and counting the density per unit of each grid cell. Westergard provided the image below to help show how the estimates are made. It's of a Tea Party Express event on April 15th that the company calculated attracted 4,436 people.
Bingo! The only time I saw those balloons up in the air was very early in the day, between 10:30-11:00AM. At that point in time there were still people streaming into the areas by the thousands. As a matter of fact, tens of thousands of people were still standing in line at the Metro stations all around the city!