It’s the last Tuesday of the last week of the Obama presidency and, already, the place is beginning to feel like a ghost town. It’s raining and a grey gloom pours in through the windows. The gates are blocked by trucks full of temporary fencing and Inaugural scaffolds. Much of the staff has already packed up and left and the few remaining West Wingers are doing the best they can, but clearly have their minds on the weekend and the freedom that comes with no longer being employed at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

But one staffer who is still very much on task is Pete Souza, the chief White House photographer, who has been by the president’s side since well before Obama became the leader of the free world. In fact, one might argue that Souza helped Obama become that imposing figure, the man who will go down in history as the first African American president, one of the most popular presidents of the modern era and, well, a guy who looked equally at home behind a podium and crawling around on the ground playing with toddlers.

An interesting facet of the Obama Era is the simple paradox that Obama was both formal and casual, aloof and intimate. Souza’s photos captured that, and blended formal training with a knack for making the pictures that found viral acclaim online. If Obama was the perfect president for the Internet Era, Souza was the ideal person to launch the official White House Flickr and later Instagram. GQ spoke with him in the Old Executive Office Building on Tuesday.

GQ: Some people might be surprised to know that you were a White House photographer first during the Reagan years and then again with President Obama. How has the White House changed and how has Washington changed?

Pete Souza

PS: The White House itself has not changed that much. I mean, the Oval Office is still the Oval Office. It’s exactly the same, the way it was. So when you walk around the White House it’s sort of like, you know, if you return home after 20 years you still remember how to drive out to your grammar school. I remember the first couple of days, President Obama came to me saying “How do I get over to the EOB?” or “Where’s the Cabinet Room again?” And then finally on like the third day I just said, “Sir you’re on your own.” I was just joking, but anyway, the White House itself hasn’t changed that much. But everything else has.

On a technical level, did digital photography increase your output? You’ve said you’ve taken around 2,000 a day average, or something like that.

I actually don’t think I shoot that much, because I’m not a motor drive kinda guy. So everything is kinda single frame. I don’t know even if I had been shooting film this administration that I would have shot any less. I don’t feel that I overshoot because of digital. Sure, you don’t have to stop at frame 36, but that’s the reason why you’d always carry ten rolls of film with you at a time. So I don’t know that that would make that much of a difference for me, at least.

Okay, because we were trying to do the math, adding up the shutter clicks, and wondering how many cameras have you completely ruined?

I don’t know how many cameras I’ve gone through but it’s probably been eight or ten. I never blew a shutter, which I know a lot of photographers occasionally do. I usually try to switch when I can feel like a camera’s about to give out. I always carried a backup camera, especially on foreign trips just in case one went down.

Our Favorite Pete Souza Photos Throughout the Obama Years





1 / 40 Chevron Chevron The White House July 26, 2012"A view from behind the President's chair during a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room." (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.

What do you carry with you day to day? What’s your favorite ideal camera setup?

I’m using the Canon 5D Mark III, and we were originally using for the first few months I was using my own personal gear because I had the original 5D but then once we were able to purchase equipment we got the 5D Mark II, and then you know it took them awhile to upgrade, and then we traded all our gear in and then got the 5D Mark III. So those two cameras, lenses, 24-70mm, 135mm, and then I sort of, the other ones is I use, is 35mm, 50mm, 85mm.

President Lyndon B. Johnson meeting with L-R: Sheldon Cohen, unidentified (probably either Marvin Watson or Stan Surrey), Joe Barr, and Charles Schultze on April 27, 1966. LBJ Library photo by Yoichi Okamoto

Who are the photographers who influenced you?