Overriding User Profiles in 4.7 Problems

I am having a weird problem overriding my default user profile pages in 4.7. When I try to print the user pictures, it looks for them in the wrong location. For example, in 4.6, it correctly found the picture at www.example.com/files/pictures/picture-1.jpg. But now in 4.7, when trying to display on the user profile pages, it thinks the picture is located at www.example.com/user/files/pictures/picture-1.jpg. This problem is specific to my theme, because when I use the default bluemarine theme, the user profiles to not exhibit this problem. Then, I tried taking the bluemarine theme and only copying over my template.php and user_profile.tpl.php files and the problem returned.

I have a template.php file looks like this:

<?php
function phptemplate_user_profile($user, $fields = array()) {
return _phptemplate_callback('user_profile', array('user' => $user, 'fields' => $fields));
}
?>
<?php
function phptemplate_profile_listing($user, $fields = array()) {
return _phptemplate_callback('profile_listing', array('user' => $user, 'fields' => $fields));
}
?>

And the relevant part of my user_profile.tpl.php file looks like this:

<?php if($user->picture): ?> 
<div class="picture">
	<img src=" <?php print $user->picture; ?> ">
</div>
<?php endif; ?> 

<?php if(!$user->picture): ?> 
<div class="picture">
	<img src=" <?php 
	$picture = variable_get('user_picture_default', ''); 
	print $picture; ?> ">
</div>
<?php endif; ?>

I've been stuck on this problem for hours. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!