Photographer to the President

With US President Barack Obama visiting Australia it brings to mind just how differently the Americans approach political photography.

I’ve written before on the anachronistic rules that determine what Australian media photographers can and can’t do in the Parliament. Hardly open, transparent or free I think you’ll agree.

It affects TV too. During George W. Bush’s 2003 visit an American network filmed his address to the Joint Sitting of Parliament themselves, an act that was in flagrant defiance of the rules (they’re meant to take the official feed, you see). Well it’s a good thing they did, because it’s their vision we now rely on each time Bob Brown’s fairly famous interjection from that day gets revisited on Australian TV.

The Americans really do approach this stuff differently.

The White House has appointed official photographers to document the terms of each president since Johnson and that doesn’t just mean grip and grins. While we do have a government photographic service in Australia, by way of its differing role and more restricted access, the two are chalk and cheese.

The “Photographer to the President” is commissioned by him directly and is considered a senior staff appointment. Some have apparently had better access to their subject than his cabinet. That they let Pete Souza into the Situation Room during the Osama bin Laden kill-capture mission last May should tell you all you need to know.

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Working for free

Working for free. It’s a subject with no shortage of blog entries, magazine articles and pub conversations in its honour.

And if you’ve taken part in any of them you’ll know that the consensus is clear: for the sake of the industry, for the sake of your fellow photographer, for the sake of yourself, they say, don’t do it.

Well I have to disagree.

Now you’re not about to read an argument in support of old gems like “do this one for free and there’ll be well paid assignments to follow,” or “it’ll be good for your portfolio”. Not for a minute.

But there are times when remuneration, if not monetary, is remuneration still.

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Observer vs. participant

Sometimes it takes the fresh perspective of an outsider to have you reconsider something you haven’t thought about in years.

A Q&A panel for students at the Art Gallery of New South Wales that I sat on recently raised a couple of good examples.

To paraphrase one of them: when would it be right for a photographer to put down their camera in order to assist in the emergency or disaster that they’re shooting? And when might it not be?

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Credit where credit’s due

I am not a rusted-on proponent of any particular manufacturer or brand. I do tend to have high expectations of my tools and I‘m pretty willing to put the boot in where appropriate and to change sides where necessary. In this I’d say photographers are mostly alike.

But you can easily run the risk of being quick to condemn when things go wrong, and slow to give credit where credit’s due. And so what follows is a bit of both.

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It’s more than shooting pictures

There’s always a little bit of angst bubbling away within photographic circles about the threat of professionals being undercut by hobbyists. It’s a fear of losing work to people who are able to charge lower fees because for them it’s a pastime, not an occupation, needing only to produce beer money, not fund a sustainable business.

Less is more

When we bill clients for the work we do, for the most part more time means more revenue. But there are occasions when it makes plenty of sense to charge more for doing less — or so it would seem.

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Getting there is half the battle

If you’re on location a lot, with loads of gear in tow, you’ll know the logistical pain that comes with photography and travel (the stress too). It’s the part of the process most likely to bring you unstuck with forgotten items or gear broken in transit. And so for working photographers it helps to have a thorough and systematic approach to travel rather than a haphazard one.

Needless to say the more gear you take with you the greater the headache. As a news photographer you might get away with what you can carry onto the plane but as a commercial guy, van loads might be in order. Either way, having a good system down pat means you’ll be much less likely to forget something small but important — like spare batteries — or to find that your cameras are in more pieces than they’re meant to be once you arrive.

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The anti-social art

I heard someone describe photography the other day as being a fundamentally anti-social activity. They were pointing out how the camera itself can isolate you from the subject of your pictures and how photographers tend to be able to hide themselves behind it. I think there’s probably a degree of truth to that.

In some fields of work, like street photography, this is to your advantage. But in the case of portraiture that description raises a good point about a bad practice.

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Leaving the Herald

Well I left the Sydney Morning Herald recently. After the best part of a decade I decided to jump ship and change tack.

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What’s old is new again