Pete Sousa, former White House photographer, thank you for joining us in Focus.
Thanks for having me on.
I got to start here. I kind of stumbled across your, and I say stumbled, I know about your work, knew about your work.
And I saw, I think a picture that you had taken in Madison, and I was like, Pete Sousa lives in Madison.
So like, what is your connection to Madison?
Well, my connection is our daughter was doing her residency here at UW.
And when I left the White House, my wife came and visited her several times.
And came to me one day and said, I want to move to Madison to be near Cali.
And so that was it. So we bought a house here in Madison.
And now we're following them again to Illinois.
Yeah, because they have moved and we've got a four year old and a one year old granddaughter.
So we want to be close to them in Illinois.
And how long did you live here?
So we lived here for almost five years.
Wow. And so I was trying to make the connection because the picture I saw was a picture from the state capital of someone singing.
And I thought I'd seen it in the capital times, but I think I just saw it on your Instagram.
So you still just kind of take your camera around and just shoot pictures?
Oh, sure. Yeah, no, I often go out and photograph.
Made two subjects these days are those two granddaughters.
But I'm also, like I photographed the eclipse on Monday.
In Illinois, we weren't quite at 100% totality.
But still, I made an attempt to photograph.
I'd better picture an attempt from Pete Sousa's probably going to be a pretty good photo.
Good snat.
Well, I tried, I experimented and got a lot of reaction to the picture I posted on Instagram.
Yeah.
Now, a lot of people know your work from being a White House photographer, but you also work for National Geographic for a little bit.
Tell me a little bit about some of the photos you did for that.
Yeah, I did, I think, three book assignments and two for the magazine.
So this would have been in the 90s.
I did a photo essay on the Big South Fork River in Kentucky and Tennessee.
And I did an essay, photo essay on the Piedmont region of North Carolina.
And both of those were published in the magazine in, I can't remember what year, like I think the first one, 93 and the second one in 95.
And then I did two travel books for them for National Geographic.
And I did a photo essay on a hiking trail that was in a book on hiking trails.
What's your preference on whether being a White House photographer versus National Geographic?
Well, National Geographic is completely different, you know, just completely different.
They're two different animals.
I will say that the experience that I had at National Geographic really helped me, I think, when I became President Obama's photographer, because there's such an emphasis on light and color
when you're worried for National Geographic and the way you compose a picture.
And so I think I honed my craft a lot better with the experience for National Geographic, which I tried to carry through into the Obama White House.
Yeah, I'd be curious to know what your thoughts are in terms of what was cool about taking pictures in Wisconsin.
What did you like, what did you see?
Well, I lived three blocks from the Capitol.
So the Capitol was often either in the background or the main subject in my photo.
But also, you know, you've got, on the isthmus, you've got a lake on either side.
And so there's, you know, opportunities at each lake.
You had the Arboretum, I was in the Arboretum a lot photographing.
And the fact that the Capitol is kind of the center for big events, whether it be a protest or, you know, some sort of a rally.
And so in terms of like news type situations, you know, I only had to walk three blocks and there I was.
So do you think we'll ever see a Madison photo book?
Probably not by me.
But I will say that I am hoping someday to do a retrospective photo book, you know, from throughout my career.
And certainly there will be photographs from Madison in that book.
I imagine you've seen a lot of our state capitals. What do you think of Madison's?
Well, the state Capitol in Madison is very similar to the one in D.C.
I mean, it's almost, you have to almost do a double take.
They're so similar.
I think that was by design, if I'm not.
Yeah.
The big difference is you can just walk into the state Capitol here in Madison any time you want.
I mean, you know, when they're open.
Whereas security in D.C. is a little different.
Just a little bit, right?
Yeah.
I love to hear your journey in photography. Like, how did you know this was going to be the career for you?
Like, at what age did that kick in?
I mean, it didn't really kick in until I was 19 or 20.
I took a photography class, my junior year of college.
I think the first print I made in the dark room, this is back in the analog black and white days
when you're having to develop your own film and then you go into the dark room to make a print.
And I think the first print that came up in the tray of developer, I was like, this is what I want to do.
I mean, the whole thing was magic to me.
It took me, you know, a good four or five years to get any good.
But I kind of knew right away that this was what I wanted to do.
And do you, how did you transition from those days of being in that lab,
smelling all those chemicals, developing photos to the digital age?
How did you transition and how did you handle that?
Well, I think it was quite the transition.
I mean, I switched to mostly digital in 2000.
That was when, I think Nikon came out with a digital camera
that the resolution was good enough that you could get a picture published in the newspaper with a digital camera.
It was, you know, it was challenging at first in many ways,
having to learn new technical skills and how to manage digital files and not film.
But it was also easier in many respects and more immediate, right?
You could within minutes have the photograph on your laptop and sending it to, you know, the home office, if you will.
Whereas previously with film, you'd have to obviously develop the film, process the film, make a print or make a scan.
And then eventually, you know, you then send that photo to the newspaper or the magazine.
So, you know, it was not a seamless transition, let's put it that way.
I feel like when I was doing that early in my journalism career, that whole process was part of what made, you know, the photo, you know, I say better and just fun.
It was part of the thrill of doing it too, but I don't know if you miss any of that at all or not.
I miss it in some respects, but on the other hand, you know, I don't want to expose myself to, you know, those chemicals every day and you're sticking your hands in the developer.
We did that in the 70s and 80s. That was no big deal.
Right. And it's just, you know, to do that every day now would just not be a good thing, I don't think.
Yeah. Let's take a look at some of your photos. We just have a few to look at here. So, what's this one here?
Yeah, so this, one of the things that I tried to do when I worked at the White House was, you know, I had one main subject, right, Barack Obama.
That's my main subject. But there's so many things going on that you may not really necessarily focus on, but I tried to.
So that one with the flag, it's at an event and the wind was kind of blowing the flag. It was the backdrop.
And I noticed that there were these two guys trying to hold the flag up from blowing down.
So I just thought it was kind of a cool shot.
Is that under a bridge or something? The flag looks nasty.
My recollection is this was the backdrop at an event and this was, these guys run some sort of a ledge.
I don't know if it was a crane that was holding up the flag. I just honestly don't remember.
Do you anticipate something like that or you just kind of see it and then it happens? How do you, how do you get it?
I mean, it's, I think everything I do is either anticipation or recognition where you see something interesting visually going on.
And, you know, probably in this case, just waiting for those two hands to pop out like that.
Let's look at the next one here. This one's called my eye because the symmetry on this caught my eye.
Yeah, so this, I forget if this is either at the White House or at Arlington National Cemetery.
And the President's about to walk out. Very, there's a lot of formality in the presidency, obviously.
And you see, these two guys are about to open the door to let, you know, as the President is announced.
They'd love to wait clubs too. So part of it is just trying to show the formality of the presidency without showing the President.
The formality probably helps you predict kind of what to expect sometimes.
Sometimes, sometimes, yeah. Although, you know, Barack Obama is a pretty informal guy.
But at certain events, it's the trappings of the presidency that are, you know, the formal part.
Yeah, and we should point out you also were the White House photographer Ronald Reagan?
That's great. Yeah. Let's go to the next photo here.
Yeah, again, so this, you know, I talked about Barack Obama being an informal guy.
And so it wasn't uncommon. I wouldn't say this happened all the time.
But occasionally, he'd be in a meeting with some of his aides in the Oval Office.
And he'd just sit on the edge of the desk like this. This is the resolute desk.
And, you know, I had made many photographs of him sitting on the desk.
But I was really struck by the placement of where his feet were dangling down.
And you see the great seal on the desk. Yeah.
And so this is the way I shot it. This is not a crop photo.
It looks like a crop photo. It's not a crop photo. This is the way I actually shot it.
Because to me, it was just interesting.
The juxtaposition of his feet with the, you know, ornate structure of that wood
from the HMS Resolute and then the great seal.
And I read it in the Ford and one of your books that he said outside of his wife and his kids,
he spent more time with you than anybody.
I mean, well, that's definitely true.
Do you only have a few moments before things start to kind of be in there when he's doing things?
Or how long do you have access in those spaces with the President to take those photographs?
As long as I want. Really? As long as I want.
Now, the only caveat is when I am overseas and I'm having to deal with foreign governments
and security, they may have a different outlook on whether I could be in the room the entire time or not.
Right.
And so oftentimes in some countries as restricted in how much access I had.
But in Washington, no, I had complete total access.
Wow. Now this photograph here looks like it's on Air Force One.
This is on Air Force One. We were going to some summit meeting in which I don't remember if this was APEC.
It was one of those meetings where at the formal dinner, they were going to have to all wear the same kind of outfit.
And they were showing him previous outfits that Presidents had to wear at these dinners.
Okay.
And there was one in particular of Bill Clinton, I think it was, wearing some outfit that just looked, you know, hideous.
But it wasn't because it was Bill Clinton, it was because all the heads of state had to wear the same hideous outfit.
And they were just showing him a picture of that.
I love the big smile there.
What is it?
Oh, that's Air Force One.
Yeah, this is Air Force One upon arrival at dusk in Los Angeles.
This was at the end of a long day.
And that's not the President in the doorway.
This is one of the Air Force One guys getting the stairway ready for the President to walk down.
But I was just really struck by the lighting because it was dusk, so you saw those clouds.
And just the incandescent light aboard Air Force One gave that orange color.
And to me, it was just the contrast between that little orange and the dark blue sky.
I thought it was just a nice graphic picture.
Yeah, and I've had the pleasure of covering a few different presidents.
And this was before the digital age, so I didn't have the greatest cameras and those sort of things to take pictures.
But the one time that I did take a picture, the President was on, and I think it was GW, he was on a smaller airport and he was on a DC-9, I think airplane.
So it was a smaller airplane, so it's not as impressive as the big boy there.
That's 747, yeah.
Yeah, so I was a little disappointed from that standpoint, but it was still Air Force One.
What's the next photo there?
Now, this one caught my attention because of just the lighting.
I don't even know what that is a photograph of, but...
Yeah, this is in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Another big summit meeting with a bunch of heads of state.
And I think Russia and China would always spend a lot of money on lighting and effects.
The Russians had this big laser show at the end of the dinner, and that's what this is depicting in front of some castle.
Yeah, I did a story with a White House photographer during the Clinton era.
Her name was Sheryl, and that kind of thing of her name, she was a...
Sherid Farmer.
That's her.
Yeah.
I did a profile on her, and she explained...
Now, she was under you because she wasn't under you.
No, no.
So she explained to me that you guys are all assigned to the President, the Vice President, the First Lady.
And I forget that there might be a floating person, but wherever the President or Vice President goes that day,
you guys end up going with them.
So if they leave the country for a week, you're gone for that week, or is that how that works?
Yeah, I was the President's photographer, so I was with him 24-7.
So you were assigned to him?
Nobody else had that role.
And then we had so many of my staff did the same with the Vice President.
And then so many of my staff, we had people rotate with the First Lady.
That's a great photo out of the window there.
Yeah, just Air Force One coming in on the land.
And you've probably seen that photograph.
Who knows how many times in your life?
Yeah, usually though the shadow is not quite that prominent.
It depends on time of day.
And then also very unusual to have, just before landing, this kind of wide open space,
where usually there's too many distracting elements, but just to have this field of grass just before we touch down.
Does it ever get old Pete?
Does it ever get old?
Yeah, just seeing these photographs I've kind of forgotten about.
How many have you taken you think over the years?
Well, during the Obama administration, 1.9 million.
1.9 million?
Yeah.
And who gets to count all those, I wonder?
Well, the National Archives has the exact number.
It's like 1.9, you know, 132, or I don't know what it is.
Yeah.
The round number is 1.9 million.
That's a lot of pictures, a lot of snaps.
Now, this is Paul Ryan.
He's a Wisconsin.
This is Paul Ryan when he was Speaker of the House, or at least the leader of the House Republicans.
This is before the ACA Affordable Care Act passed.
And he had a bipartisan meeting at the Playerhouse in D.C.
to discuss, you know, the details of the Affordable Care Act.
And this is at the conclusion of the meeting.
And I'm just chatting with Paul Ryan.
Yeah.
I wanted to shift a little bit and talk about the event that you took part in last night here on the University of Wisconsin's campus.
Sponsored by a few different organizations.
And I thought it was really interesting because you showed the photographs,
but then you had these other folks given this perspective on their potential meeting.
Are these things that you think about, thought about when you take your photographs?
Most of the time, no, to be honest with you.
But I think it's valuable to hear other people's perspective, especially noted people like Theon Hill and Cara Finn again.
So I thought it was an interesting event for me to listen to their perspective on some of my photographs.
What did you learn about your work that you hadn't thought about, maybe?
I mean, I think it's important for me to hear how the photographs resonate with people in the community at large, you know.
So oftentimes it's things I don't really think about or, you know, maybe a little bit aware of.
But to hear it articulated by those two prominent historians.
It was, I think, valuable for me to hear.
Yeah, I thought it was interesting how they put kind of a historical perspective on it.
Yeah.
You know, because when you're living it, you don't maybe always think about it.
And we look back at these things years later and it's like, oh, wow, that says something.
Oh, yeah, this is a really, really famous picture.
Yeah, so this young kid was a nephew of the, you can kind of see the guy in the background with the blue tie.
He worked for Dennis McDonough, who was then the chief of staff.
And this is his nephew coming in.
And I think he was taken aback that the president of the United States was actually right in front of him.
Like, you know, he was told we're going to go meet President Obama.
But then when you actually walk in, and this is a reaction that I saw oftentimes from people just overwhelmed at the presence of, you know, meeting the President of the United States.
Yeah.
Let's take a look at the next one here.
Oh, yeah, this is interesting.
Again, this is like sort of me, actually, this is a picture taken with my iPhone.
Pete Sousal uses an iPhone to take photographs?
I did for a while.
The White House asked me to start an Instagram account, you know, official White House Instagram account.
And so I tried to do mostly iPhone photos.
Never of the President just of some, you know, scenes away from the presidency.
And this is the day of the Easter egg roll.
And the Easter egg bunny was waiting to be introduced.
The President was inside the Blue Room.
Thus, there was a Secret Service agent, you know, at the door.
So just the juxtaposition of the Easter Bunny and the Secret Service agent, I just thought it was just a hilarious scene.
They looked like a making of a horror movie to me.
Yeah.
Oh, well, all the Presidents mean almost.
Uh, yeah, this was at the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Texas.
Bush 41, so Bush's father was also there.
But he had been wheeled out ahead of the other four because by then he was confined to a wheelchair.
And this is just before the four of these guys get introduced.
And it looks like either Clinton or Bush just told a joke.
I forget who it was.
Now, do you ever get overwhelmed when you're looking through that lens in terms of what you're experiencing?
I mean, all that power in one space like that?
I mean, I think for me, part of it was the fact that I was a, you know, a seasoned guy in terms of, you know, I had a long career already up to that point.
Had seen a lot, had been in many different situations.
So I didn't feel nervous or anxious very often at all.
I mean, I was totally comfortable in photographing whoever.
Does that come from your chops, working those streets in Chicago for the newspaper there?
I think it's all the experiences that I had throughout my career, to be honest with you.
You know, not just, you know, I covered a couple war zones and had been in a lot of, you know, tense situations.
This comparatively was easier and safer than, you know, a lot of things I did in my career.
Yeah.
Let's see the next one here.
You know, again, this is just trying to expand my vision.
This was in the cabinet room waiting for President Obama to walk in.
And this is traditionally everybody is standing until the president walks in
and they let him sit down first and everybody sits down.
That's part of the formality of the presidency.
And I just saw all the hands on the chairs.
And I thought it was just an interesting, you know, photograph that spoke to, you know, the office of the presidency,
not about any particular president.
Yeah.
You mentioned that you get to sit in for as long as you kind of want to until certain situations come up.
But I'd imagine you were around a lot of classified situations.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
I mean, I had a top secret clearance.
So I was allowed to be in any meeting that the president was in.
I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't get the memos, the top secret memos.
But it enabled me to be in the room where they were discussing, you know, top secret information.
I mentioned last night, too, that you being there as a documentarian is part of what our democracy is about
and part of just, you know, the documentation of the presidency.
How important is that, do you think?
I mean, I think it's really important for history to have somebody documenting, you know, what takes place inside a White House.
You know, more, more, you know, away from the event itself.
But what's actually happening behind the scenes?
I think that's an important part for history to have somebody making those kinds of pictures.
Yeah.
And we talk about you shooting for Reagan as well.
I think this is from...
This is from the Reagan.
This is actually the old Air Force One.
So this would have been the seven.
What was that?
A 707 or 727.
And this is coming back from a long trip, long overseas trip, and you can see everybody sleeping.
Except the guy on the left, who is Pat Buchanan.
Who for about a year was Reagan's communication director.
I remember that.
Yeah.
And what was it like, what's the difference in terms of each, another great shot of Air Force One?
The difference in shooting the different presidents, like, what's...
How did that feel?
Like, could you tell a difference, like, in terms of being around President Reagan versus being around President Obama?
Like, their comfortness with you and that sort of thing?
I think, well, I think there's so many differences.
I mean, the one similarity between Reagan and Obama is both of them were fairly even killed, had a very even killed disposition.
Right?
So it sometimes was difficult to see their emotion visually.
I don't know if that makes sense.
I also, you know, with Reagan, Reagan was an older guy, very formal in his mannerisms.
You know, didn't ever take a suit coat off in the Oval Office.
So he was formal in that kind of way.
Whereas, you know, Barack Obama was much more informal than that, was a younger guy, had a young family.
You know, Reagan's family was all grown, and they weren't around that much.
So, you know, with Reagan, I shot all film, with Obama, I shot all digital.
Like, there's so many differences.
I could probably write a whole book about the differences between, you know, photographing Reagan versus Obama.
I'd love to get your perspective on what makes a good photograph.
Well, I think it depends.
I mean, ultimately, a good photograph is authentic and has a moment.
There's like a moment in time that can't be repeated, and it's one of those unexpected moments, hopefully.
Hopefully, it has some intimacy to it.
Hopefully, it has good composition, good lighting.
There are other, you know, we showed that one picture of Air Force One in the fog.
That's more trying to establish a, you know, a scene setting picture to show the entire scene.
This is a leaving Seattle early one morning.
It was foggy.
And in this case, I backed way off because I wanted to show the motorcade near the plane
and the number of people that were actually on the ground, as Reagan was, I mean, as Obama was waving goodbye to board the plane.
And then I had to run fast so they didn't leave without me.
Right?
Oh, no. I missed my ride.
I'd imagine you've taken photos of a lot of high-profile, deliberate type folks.
Yeah, I mean, some kid last night asked me, Ruthie's son asked me, you know, what famous musicians did I photograph at the White House?
And it's like, how can you, like, there's so many I couldn't really, you know, I did say Springsteen and Paul McCartney and Beyonce and Jay-Z and things like that.
But I'm a huge Springsteen fan, so he was, this is actually the last week of the administration.
He was going to do a one-person concert for just 80 people in the East Room.
And I remember calling our social office saying, one Springsteen's going to do the soundcheck.
Because I wanted to go over there and get this photograph of him doing the soundcheck, you know, with the empty room.
Wow.
And do you ever get overwhelmed from seeing somebody that you're a fan of like that?
I was a little overwhelmed with, you know, with Springsteen being there because this was an unusual situation in that I was an invited guest.
Because it was actually a concert for all of us that had been there all eight years and are a plus one.
And so they're worth that many people.
But, you know, they said, no, you're a guest.
You're a guest.
I go, well, I'm also going to be taking photos.
So I was able to choose my seat.
And I chose a seat on the aisle so that I could, at times, watch the concert, but then easily also get up and move around and make some pictures.
Couldn't help yourself.
Couldn't help myself.
I was going to ask you, pretty obvious, you have a personal friendship with President Obama.
How did you separate the friendship from the professionalism in terms of, you know, doing your job and that sort of thing?
And how did that affect your approach?
Yeah, I don't think it affected me.
I mean, it was a professional friendship.
I don't know if there's such a word, but that's the way I refer to it.
You know, I'm not one of those friends that gets invited over for dinner.
You know, that's not the kind of friend I am.
But at the same time, you know, every emotion that he experienced as President, I was in the room for.
And in many ways, I experienced that with him.
So we have that kind of a bond that, you know, is different than any of his other friends had.
The other thing is, if I didn't have that kind of friendship, that kind of relationship with him,
I never would have been able to make many pictures, especially family photos.
You know, I was in many ways, you know, part of the family in terms of documenting his, you know, his two daughters growing up.
And, you know, if you really want to make those kinds of intimate pictures, you've got to be, you know, have some kind of relationship with the person that you're photographing.
Did you ever feel like I shouldn't be here in this space in this moment kind of thing?
I mean, I think that's a very intuitive thing to think.
And so I tried to put myself just in the shoes of, you know, a fellow human being who's having a private one-on-one conversation with one of his daughters,
saying, okay, let me get a couple pictures, and then I'm going to back away and let them have their conversation.
They don't need me to be here.
So I aired on the side of getting the picture, but I also tried to, as I said, put myself in his shoes just as a fellow human being, saying, okay, maybe this is the time to let him have some privacy with his, you know, with his daughter.
Yeah.
This photo caught my attention because of the lines in it.
What's going on here?
Yeah, so this was a secret trip to Iraq.
We were leaving Europe and unbeknownst to pretty much everybody other than this group of people.
The plane was headed to Baghdad.
We had the National Security Advisor on the far left, the head of the Secret Service on the right, and communication with their counterparts that were already on the ground in Baghdad, trying to make a determination.
Is it safe to land?
This is while the war was still going on, and very tense on whether we were going to be able to land safely or not.
Wow.
Let's see the next one here.
And then this would have been, I can't remember if this is 2009 or 2010, but this is at West Point when President Obama had made a decision on how many troops to keep in Afghanistan and was going to present this decision to the cadets at West Point first.
These are guys that would eventually graduate from West Point, U.S. Military Academy, and possibly be headed to Afghanistan.
Yeah.
Now, this caught my eye because I remember President Obama saying to Jerry Seinfeld when he did communities and cars getting coffee that he missed driving, and I know he's not driving.
He's not driving.
He's not driving.
I know that.
This is, I can't remember if this is a Ford or a GM plant, and those are all UAW workers in the background, and somebody, they had a couple of cars set up near the stage, and somebody suggested, hey, why don't you get in the car, you know?
So he got in the car, and then I shot this through the passenger window of everybody trying to shake his hand through the window, and somebody had said something to him that made him laugh.
He did drive a couple times.
I've got pictures of him.
One day Robert Gibbs brought his new hybrid car to the White House, and President Obama said, let's take it for a spin.
And he drove kind of around the South Lawn, and I remember his Secret Service was radioing to the gates.
Whatever you do, don't let this car outside the White House, you know.
So Obama just did a couple of laps around the South Lawn.
I remember seeing that also in that episode with Seinfeld.
He also drove, yeah, that Corvette, that Seinfeld brought, and I'm trying to think, oh, there was another time.
We went to Secret Service, the training facility out in Bellville, Maryland, and they let him drive out there too.
Now this picture was cool.
I'm surprised you pulled this one up.
Well, it caught the spacing caught it, and then I read the back story that caught me too.
Yeah, so this is the day of the Bin Laden raid, believe it or not.
And we were walking, I'm trying to remember at what point during the day this was, but the White House was very quiet that day because tours had been closed.
And so there was nobody at the White House other than his national security aides.
It was very unusual for the White House to be that quiet.
Usually people walking along the colonnade so a duck would not land on the steps like that.
And I just thought it was such an unusual picture that I made a couple frames of this.
I feel like you couldn't, you could wait 100 years and that would never happen again.
Yeah, I know.
I don't know how that duck got there.
Now this is probably one of the-
Does that same day, believe it or not?
Was this the same day?
That's the same day, yeah.
And this would have been when the sale team was making the raid on Bin Laden's.
Yes.
So May 1st, 2011, late afternoon, probably between 3.30 and 4.15.
You've got the most powerful people in the executive branch of our government decision makers in that room.
But for those 40 minutes, they were- there was nothing they could do to affect the outcome.
Right?
It was completely up to those guys on the ground.
When you're framing this photograph, are you thinking I'm going to take a photograph that shows how powerless they are?
Or is that something you kind of notice afterwards as you see all the little bits and pieces that you captured here?
I mean, I guess I wasn't inherently thinking that thought at the time.
What I was thinking is, what's the mood that I see in front of me?
What's- and trying to capture that in a single frame?
And did that mood last for a period of time, or was that just a moment in that space?
No, that mood lasted for, I think, the entire 40 minutes we were in that room.
And so when I'm going through my photographs, trying to choose the best one,
obviously photography in many ways is a subjective medium, right?
But it was, I think, initially myself and a photo editor, we zeroed in on maybe four frames
from the 40 minutes in this room.
And we just tried to compare one to another, trying to, like, which do you think is the best?
And this just seemed to work the best the way everybody's faces sort of expressed what I felt.
I think what they all felt.
Yeah.
Next photo here.
I think this gets into the transition.
What was that like for you in terms of not just a different president coming in,
but for your, you know, position to kind of-
Well, I mean, I think the- I was concerned that the country had voted this guy in.
You know, I didn't feel he understood what it meant to respect the office of the presidency.
And so I've got to kind of put those feelings aside, but I'm also a human being.
And so, you know, I tried to, as best I could, take the high road as President Obama had taken
by inviting him to the White House two days after the election because he wanted to try
to, like, you know, calm people down as best he could.
But it was very unsettling feeling for me that this is the guy that was going to succeed
Barack Obama.
And this, we didn't make this picture public, but I thought it was a good picture to include
in my book as, you know, not having to necessarily show his face, you know, who that is, just by
looking at him.
What's he peeking?
So this is just, there's a little hallway off the Oval Office that leads into the private
dining room.
The private dining room is what you see in the back room.
And to the left is like what's called the presidential study, which President Obama hardly
ever used that little room.
So it had mostly mementos in there.
There was a little desk with a computer.
But it was mostly pictures of the family on the wall.
And it was a picture of Thurgood Marshall on the wall.
And he was just giving President Obama's actually inside the study.
And he's just showing the President elect, you know, the study, the dining room.
And so this was on their whole tour.
So President Obama's actually doing the tour?
Yeah, yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
Now what's this one here?
And this is on January 20th, 2017.
I'm inside the helicopter just before President Obama and Michelle board the helicopter.
And he's saying goodbye to now President Trump.
This would have been right after the swearing in ceremony.
Wow.
So Pete, do you miss the action now that you've been away from for a while?
Do you miss the action of that job?
No, I was worn out after eight years in many ways, both physically and I think emotionally.
So I don't miss it.
What haven't you taken pictures of that you'd like to take pictures of?
What haven't?
I've taken pictures.
Yeah.
Anything?
Let's see.
I really want to photograph Bruce Springsteen in Europe.
Like I photographed him many of his shows, including a couple last year, I guess three last year.
But I hear the shows in Europe are completely different.
I'd also like to photograph, I don't know.
My main subject these days are a four-year-old and a one-year-old, my two granddaughters.
And then we have a cabin in northern Michigan and I've been doing some artsy nature photos
at the cabin that I'm hoping to do a little book from eventually.
So I'm just going to continue on those projects.
Have you ever messed up a photograph?
Missed it.
Never.
Pete.
All the time.
I mean, I think that in many ways, especially when you're starting out in photography, that's
how you learn.
Is messing up.
I messed up as much as anybody, especially when I was starting out.
And I think that that's what makes you better, is to learn from your mistakes.
Yeah.
Last question here.
Your advice to any aspiring photographer out there, what do they need to focus on?
What should they be doing?
Well, first of all, what kind of photographer do you want to be?
Because the world of photography has so many genres to it.
I think you've got to decide what kind of photographer you want to be, whether it's
journalism, whether it's art, whether it's a music photographer.
You've got to make, you've got to follow your passion within photography to figure out what
kind of photographer you're going to be and then just make pictures every day.
You can't pick up a camera once a week and be a great photographer.
You've just got to do it every day.
I mean, it's very similar to writing, right?
You need to write every day if you want to be a really good writer, same with photography.
You've just got to get out there and make pictures.
Henry Cartier-Breson, the great French photographer who captured so many decisive moments.
He once said that his worst photographs were his first 10,000.
And I think that's pretty good advice.
As I said, learn from your mistakes.
Get them out of the way early and just get out there every day and photograph every day.
I know I said last question, but I had to get this in.
You talked last night about the selfie and what President Obama kind of thought of that
in terms of how people would, you know, if things, you know, they talked about the history
of how, you know, people used to take pictures of presidents and then all of a sudden they
started to do the selfies where they'd have to be in the frame.
Can you touch on that just a little bit in terms of how you felt that impacted, you know,
watching the president?
Well, you know, I made some interesting pictures for me, right, to see this kind of change taking
place.
And it really is, it's traced to exactly when the majority of people got a smartphone.
You know, because at first, smartphones are so expensive that not everybody could afford
them.
Now, everybody has a smartphone, everybody, like almost everybody.
And so that is something that is just a part of who we are now as Americans.
And for whatever reason, there's a need for each of us to have to do a selfie in anything
anytime.
We're in presence of, you know, a celebrity or a friend or, you know, if you go out to
dinner with somebody, you've got to do a selfie with them.
That's just what we've become as a society.
And I think it was humorous to me at times to watch this transition take place because
it happened during the Obama administration, go, you know, I showed those pictures early
on in 2009, 2010, where he's along a rope line after an event.
People excited to meet him and you don't see people trying to take a selfie, they're
like trying to shake his hand, trying to meet him.
And then as the years went by 2012, 2013, 2014, everybody's out there with their cell
phone trying to get a selfie with him instead of shaking his hand and look him in the eye.
So for me, it was an interesting, interesting transition to watch that take place and try
to document that.
But like if you're the President of the United States and all of a sudden, people are like
turned away from you to take a picture with their selfie, I mean to take a picture with
their iPhone and not lucky, that's got to be, you know, just a difficult situation to
be in, I think.
Yeah, I've always said that your selfie is not going to be as important and memorable
as my moment, you know, dealing with that person and dealing with that moment.
Pizzos, I appreciate you going over time with us.
Thank you for joining us on In Focus.
Thanks for having me.
Appreciate you so much.
Yep.