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.

'Reset': It's the End of the World as We've Known It. Now Start Over.

Highly recommended weekend read: Reset, by Kurt Andersen

It's a slim volume, but stuffed with original and provocative ideas -- you'll spend as much time ruminating about each page as reading it.

It asks: What succeeds the wretched age of excess that defined the past quarter century (starting with Reagan, and ending last year)?

Now that the unthinkable has happened -- the bubble has burst, the economy is in the toilet, our careers and lives have been irreversibly disrupted and derailed -- what's next?

Andersen's title reflects his optimism that, instead of picking up the pieces and trying to restore what we once had -- which arguably was "too much" and ultimately unsustainable -- we will get back to our roots, so to speak, and rethink things from the ground up.

We'll refocus on our needs, not just our wants.

And we should look at the economic meltdown as an opportunity not to get back on track, but to create a new and improved track.

"Necessity," he writes, "is the mother of re-invention."

For journalists (and photojournalists and videojournalists), that means creatively re-positioning yourself and your talents, and finding a way to make a living that does not rely on dying institutions such as newspapers and magazines and TV news.

Time Magazine, which calls Andersen the "poet laureate of the recession," devoted a weeklong blog to his book.

And it excerpted four meaty chunks of the book itself:

Is China the New Us? Or Are We?

The Coming New New Economy

Boomers: Older and Maybe, Finally Wiser

Immigration: Let's Get Over It Already

No, it's not the end of the world, says Andersen. But it's the end of the world as we've known it (to paraphrase REM). The smart and industrious among us will stop wallowing in nostalgia, and start building a new world. 'Reset' shows us how.

Obama's Intimate Moments, by Pete Souza

One of my earliest photojournalism students was Pete Souza, who is now President Obama's official White House photographer, giving him extraordinary access to the president's most intimate and private moments. In a recent interview with CNN's John King, focusing on Obama's first 100 days in office, we got to see and hear about some of those behind-the-scenes shots.

Souza, who is on leave of absence from his normal post as an assistant professor of photojournalism at Ohio University's School of Visual Communication, had previously served as President Reagan's official photographer, and on the staff of the Chicago Tribune.

"I look at my job as a visual historian," Souza says of his current position. "The most important thing is to create a good visual archive for history, so 50 or a hundred years from now, people can go back and look at all these pictures."

When asked to choose one picture as his favorite, Souza selected one of the president and first lady softly butting heads in a freight elevator, surrounded by staffers who appear to be avoiding eye contact with the couple. Michelle Obama is smiling playfully wearing her husband's jacket.

"I chose this one because it's a genuine moment. It was chilly in the elevator. He took his coat off, put it around his wife's shoulders and then there is this private moment going on between the two of them," he said. "It's just a complete storytelling picture."