Overexposed
Unlike the wires, which provide resolute coverage of every White House event, magazine photographers can dismiss the intentions of these photo ops and focus on the president himself, to make an image that reflects on the larger White House story. We are out to offer perspective, to characterize a president's ups or downs, successes or failures. So, while other photographers are competing for the cleanest view of the president with this year's spelling bee champs, the magazine photographers are often looking for a different angle entirely, the spot where all these extraneous persons are rendered invisible.
On the frequent occasion of a presidential event elsewhere in Washington, the press pool is hastily escorted to two vans parked near the end of the presidential motorcade. The photographers claim the front rows, since we need to jump out first should the president emerge to shake a few hands or meet with a more dramatic turn of events. The last to arrive in the motorcade is the president himself, a distant blur ducking into a limousine. And then we're off, tearing through the city streets, paying no mind to such nuisances as road signs, stoplights, and rush-hour motorists.
Upon arrival, van doors burst open, and journalists leap out; photographers, scribblers, videographers, soundpeople--everyone is amped, running, and near panic: "Pool! This way!" We are a horrible, panting, sweating stampede--the personification of everyone's worst impression of the media, bumping into stanchions and abandoning colleagues who couldn't keep up. And for what? So we don't miss the first 10 seconds of another podium picture.
They are all the same, these "in-town" events--held in the banquet halls of the Washington Hilton or the Omni Shoreham--the settings supremely dull, the curtains deep red or presidential blue, the tungsten-lit stage with a single lectern, with us squatting between audience and stage, pointing our 80-200s straight up the president's nostrils, then crawling across the carpet on hands and knees looking for a better angle. A shot through the water glasses, perhaps? Maybe a silhouette of Bush in a spotlight? It rarely works. These sites are so devoid of visual potential that if the entire lot of us were magically replaced with the most gifted artists ever to peer through a viewfinder--Capa, Smith, Cartier-Bresson--they, too, would make nary a frame.
Globe-trotting. If photographing the president in Washington is stale, controlled, and crowded, photographing him on the road is a world of opportunity. Usually only six shooters travel, the three wires and three magazines. There is more room to move, the settings are far less predictable, and there is often at least one event where the light is just right, where the president is relaxed and acting off the cuff, and you have the time and space to make an actual photograph. That is, when you're not driving, helicoptering, or flying on Air Force One from one place to the next.
"That must be so fascinating," is the usual cocktail observation about flying aboard the president's plane. After 10 years of this task, I consider it my journalistic duty, if not my patriotic one, to offer a more accurate perspective. There is no retina scan to board, no escape pod to play in, no view of the front of the plane or of the big man himself emerging from his study to invite you in for a beer or a game of cards. Only once have I made it to the front of the plane, and it was well before the president boarded, on a quick courtesy tour with a steward. "This is where the president sleeps," the steward said. Pushing open the bathroom door, he continued, "And this is where he does his thinking."
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