WH photographer Pete Souza captured around 2 million photos over 8 years while Obama was in office.

[rug]

These are some of his favorite shots.









http://imgur.com/gallery/G4A7U

[Skittles]

1. that scale one always cracks me up

his mischievous side

[rug]

7. Me too. But this one has to be the most poignant.

[Skittles]

13. touch it, dude!

LOVE IT

[mopinko]

23. it's my fave.

the ones w the kids are cute. show his big heart.
but that scale one is just a stitch.

[underpants]

48. Me too

[progressoid]

2. This one is new to me.

[Moostache]

3. Thank you.

That is such a great picture...

[sheshe2]

5. I posted it awhile ago.... lol.

Captioned it....

Obama Bench Presses an Elephant



Think about all that drool. Obama is a keeper.

[progressoid]

10. You also need to watch out if the kid has a sensitive stomach.

Our second daughter was always spewing nasty stuff if she was moved too quickly. I nearly got it in the face once.
Just once and you learn your lesson!

[Cracklin Charlie]

8. What is he doing to that Republican baby?

One of my favorite pictures is the one of the President fist bumping the janitor (maybe security guard) in the Capitol Building.

[SCantiGOP]

30. Has the GOP started hearings yet

I see two impeachable offenses: the obvious child endangerment, and the very first one in the OP where Obama is clearly stealing a piece of fruit and hoping no one is watching.

[dembotoz]

44. imPEACHment

[whathehell]

4. Great pics..

Thanks.

[sheshe2]

6. Thanks rug.

Love them all!



Souza's web site is magnificent.

[TexasMommaWithAHat]

26. I love this one!

nt

[herding cats]

9. K&R!

I'm going to miss him.

Now, off to see if there's any I've missed there! 😄

[bigwillq]

11. Cool pics (nt)

[3catwoman3]

12. I wish I could see all...

...of them.

[lpbk2713]

14. Souza took this one ... One of my faves.

Link: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/11/18/barack-obama-and-gymnast-mckayla-maroney-strike-the-not-impressed-pose/

[rug]

17. Heh. He naturally relates to whomever he's with.

[BlueMTexpat]

15. Thanks, rug!

A HUGE K&R!!!

[former9thward]

16. Your math does not add up.

If he took 2 million photos in 7 and 1/2 years that means he took 741 photos every single day 24/7 for all that time. A ridiculous number.

[rug]

18. He has a fast shutter.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

20. Wrong. You aren't a pro photographer, esp. a photojournalist, are you?

I am not either, but I know what they do and how they do it.

You are thinking they click, then wait a minute for the next "staged shot" and then click another time. It doesn't work like that.

When an opportunity comes up, the photographer goes into a flurry of action. For each possible "photo", the photographer will click a dozen shots (holds down button once for one to a dozen or more shutter actuations). In one interaction, there will be several possible photos. For each situation there will be many interactions. There are many situations during a day.

Getting to 741 shots in a day is very easy. Most days would have over a thousand, and it would not be exceptional to have 2,000 in one day.

Suppose 10 situations (meetings, speeches, greetings, etc.) in a day, 10 interactions (even with a few people: shake hands, wave, walk, sign a paper) in each situation, 5 possible "photos" (reach out hand, clasp hand, double grip hand, hand pats shoulder, turn and smile) in each interaction, 5 clicks (actuations, captures) for each "photo". 10 x 10 x 5 x 5 = 2500.

Souza uses Canon gear, very likely a 1D-X camera. It can shoot 12 frames per second.

The reason they shoot at such high frame rates is so that they get the peak instant of the action.

Expressions can appear and disappear in a fraction of a second.

[mopinko]

24. prolly has the camera set to do a burst every time.

wouldnt be surprised if EVERY time he hits the shutter it does at least a dozen in a burst.

[snooper2]

25. The photographer doesn't go into a flurry of action, the camera does

he is just standing or kneeling there holding a button...VERY FEW calories burned LOL

[Bernardo de La Paz]

27. Another non-photographer. I'm not pro, but I go into action for lesser events & I'm tired after. .nt

[OriginalGeek]

33. I'm not even a very good amateur

but that's the reason I'm leaving my "good" camera home when we go on our anniversary cruise in a few weeks. If I took it I would never just relax and enjoy the cruise - I'd be trying to take pictures. You gotta WORK to get good pictures. Working the equipment, working to get into the right position, working to hold that position as everything is moving around you, etc...

I love taking pictures but I just don't want to deal with all that on our first real cruise. I'm just there to celebrate 30 years with my wife by drinking, eating and doing stupid tourist things lol.

I have a point-and-shoot and my phone cam. Will never even take them off auto. Will probably leave them in the cabin some days. Depending how it goes I hope to cruise again in the future so I can worry about getting photographs then.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

35. +1

[mindfulNJ]

43. You have obviously never shot an event.

I am a pro photographer who has shot weddings and let me tell you...you don't just set your camera on burst mode and shoot it like a machine gun. The job of the event photographer is to know the best place to be in the room, adjust your settings to the light, and not get in the way of what's happening. I can imagine that Pete Souza is not kneeling in the corner of the Oval office waiting for Obama to do something. The president is constantly on the go, there are changing light situations that the photographer must adjust to, sometimes within seconds. Not to mention adjusting your focus points, aperture ,ISO,shutter speed, etc. I'd venture to guess that he doesn't shoot in auto mode. Look at his photographs...he is always in the right position to get a great composition. That doesn't just happen, it's a true talent. Try spending all day every day doing that....you will be exhausted, believe me.

[Lochloosa]

31. My camera will take 20-30 shots a minute if I want to.

[former9thward]

32. Will any of them be worth anything?

The claim of 2 million photos is BS and someone playing a numbers game. Who would want someone around them 24/7 taking photos all of the time? Bad enough a million cameras pointed at you in public.

[OriginalGeek]

34. Some will be (in general, not trying to speak for Lochloosa)

that's why you take so many. You might be lucky to get 1 good out of 10 or 20 shots. You might get 10 or 20 good but there will almost always be a best.

One of the first things you learn in basic photography is bracketing wherein you compose your picture and then you decide on your correct exposure/f-stop/shutter speed and then you take shots all up and down the dial with different settings. This was more common on film cameras as we didn't have the luxury of looking at it and deleting it if it sucked but they still do it now with burst modes and they can take hundreds and thousands of shots and sort out the good ones later. Especially in a moving, active environment - you just don't have time to set things up. Just shoot and keep shooting and go through them all later.

[Lochloosa]

40. Thank you Couldn't have explained it better.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

36. It's not BS, it's not 24/7, and you don't have a clue about what you are talking about. . nt

[former9thward]

39. Oh you were there...

[OriginalGeek]

45. are you just being snarky because you're embarrassed?

It's OK to be wrong man. It's even OK to not learn from being wrong if that's how you choose to go through life. And there's no law that says you can't be snarky when you see you've been proven wrong but it makes you look foolish if that's a concern of yours.

When I was a teenager I was a photographer at an amusement park. I shot pictures of guests entering the park on a manual, half-frame camera using 36 exposure slide film for those little key-chain slide viewers like this:


On a regular day I easily shot 10 rolls of film an hour - since they were half-frame cameras that means I got 72 pictures from each roll of film. That's 720 pics an hour in the hot, Texas sun on a camera I had to MANUALLY wind the film forward.

I usually took 3~4 pics of the guests and gave them a hand-written note with an ID number and a short spiel about where they could see and buy the pics. My boss used to yell at me because he thought I took too many pics of single ladies instead of families. "Families buy pictures! Not single girls!" (he was right but I was a teenage boy and teenage girls were of particular interest to me and hard to ignore. I compromised and brought him loads of film of families that happened to have daughters. He was happy and I got dates lol)

If I could handle doing the above rate for a full 40 hour work week I'd have shot nearly 29,000 pictures in a week and I bet a dollar Mr Souza was on duty way more than I was. (I didn't maintain that rate though - I would go rest in the shade, talk to girls, eat lunch, slower times in the park when guests weren't pouring in the front gate, etc...I got paid 75 cents per roll of film though so I did try to keep it up as much as possible - this was early 80s and $7.50 an hour bought a lot of weed

The point is the 2 million shots in 8 years is easily attainable and folks here have tried to explain it to you nicely but you are being stubborn and don't want to hear it.

[Phentex]

19. Easy to do with such a great subject...

the whole family was photogenic. The dogs too!

I hope there's a book available.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

21. Great photos, great post. Souza is very professional. Observant, attentive, highly competent. nt

[betsuni]

22. K&R

[drray23]

28. impressive.

I wonder if he got arthritis in his shutter finger.. thats a lot of pics to take.

it is wonderfull we will have all that material for future generations to look at when they learn about president Obama legacy.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

38. More likely arthritis in his mouse finger selecting and refining the selects. . . nt

[Craig234]

29. JFK photos

Perhaps the best photographed president in history is JFK, and sadly the archive of Jaques Lowe's photos of him were lost in 9/11, stored in the WTC.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

37. If you practice active archiving digitally including at least one set off-site, losses like that

If you practice active archiving digitally including at least one set off-site, losses like that will never occur.

The guideline is: A copy of every file on at least 3 different disks, one of those disks off-site. Cloud storage counts as offsite, but it may be hard to get the files back if you need them, depending on some arrangements. A simple way is to use two external drives, and keep one of them at the office or at a friend/relative's house. Swap them every month or two. That way you lose at most a month of photos, files, and documents.

[Craig234]

41. Correct

I know. I don't know why they weren't copied.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

42. Good scans of old negatives is hard work and hence expensive, especially 16 years ago.

I have negatives and colour slides I should scan / macro photograph.

[ailsagirl]

46. Wonderful photos but they brought tears to my eyes

I'm going to miss him SO MUCH

[densan]

47. Did he pay for it?

Re: pic #1 ...
Sorry, seen this scenario in real life like many of us...
Did he produce the pit at the checkout counter?
And then "fork-up"

[ailsagirl]

49. Wondered the same thing

But then forgot about it as I looked at the other pix

I'm sure he did

[treestar]

50. Fun to look them over again

Obama may be the most photogenic person to live.