Official Presidential Portrait Goes Digital

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President Barack Obama digital portraitThe recent election and inauguration of President Barack Obama was a first in more ways than one. His official presidential portrait is the first in history to be taken with a digital camera.

The official portrait, released by Obama’s office Jan. 14, was shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II by newly announced White House photographer Pete Souza. The presidential portrait will hang in federal office buildings across the country and U.S. embassies around the globe. It has been distributed to news media and accompanies the president’s biography on the newly redesigned White House Web site.



Canon EOS 5D Mark II – The Presidential Camera


The digital portrait contains EXIF data readily viewable to anyone with photo software. Along with the photographer’s name and camera model, it says the image was taken Jan. 13 at an exposure of ISO 100 with a 1/125-second shutter speed and aperture of f/10.

This is Souza’s second term as an official White House photographer. He previously worked for President Ronald Reagan, as well as for the Chicago Tribune’s Washington bureau and as a freelancer for National Geographic. In July 2008, Souza published a book of photographs titled “The Rise of Barack Obama,” chronicling the Illinois senator’s first year in office and the early months of his presidential campaign.

Souza’s Web site also contains galleries featuring numerous photos of both Obama and Reagan.

– By Patia Stephens

Related Content:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II Reviews
Pete Souza Photography
Change.gov: “New official portrait released”
The White House

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  • Kelly says:

    It strikes me that the lighting could have been better. This seems a bit dull. Am I off base here?

  • Photo-John says:

    Kelly-
    I don’t think you’re off-base. But this looks like an unedited image to me. It looks like what one of my RAW images looks like before post-processing. Maybe they shot it conservatively and then just made it available as-is. As far as a starting point for post-processing, this looks like an excellent exposure to me. The whites aren’t blown, there appears to be plenty of shadow detail, and the lighting is nice and even. If it were my photo, I’d lighten it a bit, pump up the saturation and contrast a little, and maybe warm it up just a tad. Then I think you’d like it better. But if it was just a plain, working capture, I think this looks excellent.

  • ricco says:

    for me, it’s an excellent photo. the photo maybe was done with a small set of lights that turned out to be a good portrait.

  • Carl says:

    I imported the shot, used PhotoShop to autocorrect the exposure, then pumped up the saturation to 30. Just as John suggested, it looks great. Much more definition on the shadows, etc.

  • Naser says:

    The lighting definitely seems a bit off on the right. I can almost see a shade over the right half of Mr Obama’s face. Kinda like Dr Doom :)

    The tux looks swell though.

    Update: After checking out the Change.gov version, its pretty clear that this is the unedited one. The one at Change.gov looks much cleaner/brighter.

  • Patia says:

    Actually, they’re identical except that this one was sized down. This one was downloaded from the Change.gov page.

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