President's Photographer: Tonight on PBS

Be sure to catch The President's Photographer: 50 Years in the Oval Office tonight on PBS. The National Geographic production features Pete Souza, an acclaimed photojournalist who previously served as President Reagan's official photographer, and now performs those same duties for President Obama.

Did we mention that Pete was one of our first photojournalism students, way back when? He's currently on leave of absence from his normal post as an assistant professor of photojournalism at Ohio University's School of Visual Communication.

The presidential photographer's job is two-fold: one, taking photographs of the president greeting dignitaries, visitors and guests; and two, perhaps more challenging and gratifying: documenting for history every possible aspect of the presidency, both official events, backstage happenings and "off-duty" private moments. "Creating a good photographic archive for history is the most important part of my job, creating this archive that will live on," says Souza. "This is not so much photojournalism as photo-history." Souza and his staff produce up to 20,000 pictures a week.

"The job of presidential photographer is all about access and trust, and if you have both of those you're going to make interesting, historic pictures," Souza says. He earned the President's trust by following Obama on his rise to the Presidency covering then Senator Obama as a photographer for the Chicago Tribune.

Watch the full episode. See more The Presidents Photographer.

Read the Washington Post's excellent review here. Excerpt:

Perhaps only Bo the Dog and personal aide Reggie Love have better access to Obama than Souza, who is a constant presence with a couple of cameras slung over his droopy shoulders. Both Bo and Love figure prominently in some of the memorable shots Souza has taken so far; the president, we learn, is particularly enamored of a photograph of himself blocking Love's shot on the basketball court....

Without hammering the point, and with some of the more interesting behind-the-scenes footage yet of the Obama White House, "The President's Photographer" makes clear the lasting power of the still photograph, even in this tech-savvy era. It's possible that Souza's perfect picture of Obama already exists; probably it has yet to be taken. Time has a way of editing all images down to the one that says it all.

Read our previous blog items about Pete Souza, here and here. And check out his online portfolio, which also showcases his "non-presidential" assignments.

Check your local PBS listings for air times.

Meet President Obama's Official Videographer

Arun Chaudhary, a former NYU film instructor, is the first person to hold the job of White House videographer. According to today's New York Times profile, he is "part documentarian, part White House-message-machine post. He travels with the president on roughly two-thirds of his trips, documenting the behind-the-scenes occasions and public theatrics."



Using only his handheld videocamera and laptop, Chaudhary compiles his video highlights into a weekly roundup, "West Wing Week," which appears on WhiteHouse.gov every Friday. (See this week's episode below.)

The profile depicts Chaudhary as a perpetually disheveled man on the go, scrambling to both keep up with President Obama and keep out of his way -- though the boss offers his personal documentarian the ultimate accolade: "a very cool guy."

Like official White House photographers, Chaudhary is part historian, part propagandist, searching for and releasing only the President's most flattering moments. But that is not without precedent.

Since at least the time of President Ronald Reagan, successive White Houses have understood the power of video, investing time and effort into creating images for television to record.

But Obama aides have gone a step further, creating imagery and then filming it themselves, knowing they can inject it into the media bloodstream because of video-sharing sites like YouTube and the increased appetite for new media and technology.

But Chaudhary claims he is taking the long view, and capturing history in the making for future generations to savor -- especially the largely unseen candid side of President Obama, even the awkward or unflattering moments. All those deleted scenes and outtakes are preserved on huge storage servers and will become part of the official record in the presidential library.

As with videojournalists, Chaudhary finds the best moments are the unanticipated ones -- the private interactions that occur between the official staged events. “Whether you are in the United Nations or a castle in Prague," he notes, "anything can happen, and probably will, in the hallway.”

Here's this week's episode of West Wing Week:

The Big Cheese Doesn't Stand Alone

Another controversy is broiling over a digitally manipulated news image on a magazine cover.

This time it's a photograph of President Obama standing alone on a Louisiana beach, for The Economist's June 19 cover story on the BP oil spill catastrophe.

Except in the original unaltered image, by Reuters photographer Larry Downing, he's not alone. By cropping out Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard (routinely acceptable) and Photoshopping out Charlotte Randolph, a local parish president (highly questionable), it appears that he's "looking forlornly at the ground," as a New York Times blog item accurately describes it.

The Economist violated Reuters' own strict photo-editing policies. In its defense, deputy editor Emma Duncan declared (in an email to the N.Y. Times) that cropping Allen was justified, and that Randolph was "removed not to make a political point, but because the presence of an unknown woman would have been puzzling to readers. I wanted readers to focus on Mr. Obama, not because I wanted to make him look isolated. That wasn’t the point of the story."

Still, that was indubitably the net effect -- all the more proof that any photo editing that fudges reality is bound to create more problems than it solves.

'Obama Time Capsule' Puts You in the Picture

Photographer Rick Smolan, best known as the visionary co-creator of the mega-successful "Day in the Life" coffeetable-book series, has done it again.

He's put together a revolutionary new customized book project that serves twin purposes. It memorializes Pres. Obama's road to the White House through the eyes of the world's top photographers. And it enables you to personalize your copy so that it includes your name, photo, and thoughts woven throughout the book.

"The Obama Time Capsule" spans a two-year period, including Election Day, the inauguration, and his first 100 days in office. It features essays from TIME magazine’s Joe Klein, the Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and the president’s sister, Auma Obama.

But what makes the project especially noteworthy is that there are nine customizable elements in the book. After you order it, you can personalize it by going online and adding your name on the cover, your photo on the back cover, your own dedication page, your name to the inaugural invitation page, your name and photo to the celebrity supporter page, even your own kids' artwork to the "Kids for Obama" page. And then the one-of-a-kind book will be shipped to you.

Smolan's "Obama Time Capsule" represents a new chapter in custom publishing, incorporating an especially fitting topic and theme.

See the ABC News slideshow here.

Nielsen: Online Video Use Skyrockets

Online video engagement by Internet users is deepening, according to a new report on the online landscape released last week by The Nielsen Company.

Nielsen Online CEO John Burbank takes a look at the economic and advertising impacts of the report.



Highlights of the report:

* The number of American users frequenting online video destinations has climbed 339 percent since 2003.

* Time spent on video sites has shot up almost 2,000 percent over the same period.

* In the last year alone, unique viewers of online video grew 10 percent, the number of streams grew 41 percent, the streams per user grew 27 percent and the total minutes engaged with online video grew 71 percent.

Nielsen also reports that video viewing has been a key element in the success of President Obama's revamped WhiteHouse.gov Website.

The proliferation of video across the site, from the President’s weekly video address to video segments on the site’s blog, has helped spur this impressive growth. Unique viewers of video content increased 236 percent month-over-month, growing from 75,000 in February to 252,000 in March 2009, while total video streams increased 350 percent during the same time period.

What's fascinating is that it's not just young folks who are tuned in to online video: "Unique viewers 35 to 49 were 78 percent more likely to view video on WhiteHouse.gov than the average viewer, while people 65 and older were 48 percent more likely."

An experimental new video feature on whitehouse.gov, Open for Questions, was launched this March, allowing the President to address questions posed by citizens via online video. Reports Nielsen: "Open for Questions was one of the top subdomains visited within WhiteHouse.gov, receiving 618,000 unique visitors during the month." (By its own measure, the site itself additionally reports that 92,937 people have submitted 103,978 questions.)

Online video comes of age.