It looks like bootstrap less/CSS forces an automatic height to avoid stretching the image when the width has to change to be responsive. I switched it around to make the width auto and fix the height.
<div class="item peopleCarouselImg">
<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/...">
...
</div>
I then define img with a class peopleCarouselImg like this:
.peopleCarouselImg img {
width: auto;
height: 225px;
max-height: 225px;
}
I fix my height to 225px. I let the width automatically adjust to keep the aspect ratio correct.
This seems to work for me.