Charles Ommanney, an Obama “Original,” Snags News Photo Prize
Charles Ommanney covering Obama in New Hampshire 1/6/2008
Award-winning Newsweek photojournalist Ommanney talked with Holly Fine about covering the White House.
The winner of this year’s Best Photo award from the White House News Photographers’ Association, Newsweek’s Charles Ommanney, talked with WHCInsider about covering President Obama during his public and private moments from the campaign to the Oval Office. Ommanney told WHCI contributor Holly Fine that while candidate Obama had occasionally denied him access, team Obama understands something the Bush staff did not: the power of images.
Holly Fine Some people say your photographs got Barack Obama elected. How do you react to that?
Charles Ommanney Well my God that’s so funny! In a way, I suppose I could say that is an incredible compliment. At the same time, it’s a very gray area in journalism. When you work very close to these people, you find yourself being in a bubble and you forget about the outside world. You can wake up one day and you realize or question whether you are being objective, because it is hard to not like someone like Barack Obama. In fact, it was actually hard once I got on the inside of the Bush campaign in 2000, it was hard not to like him. It’s kind of a gray area that we all go through, you ask anyone who spends time traveling with a presidential candidate.
HF Can you remember the exact moment when you said to yourself, I am photographing the face of the next president?
CO I think around Iowa, when the Iowa caucus was going on. The size of the crowd and again it all comes back to this sort of bubble that you live in. We were hearing on the road that John McCain was getting 2,000 people, if he was lucky, in an audience and then you were going to gymnasiums in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids and having 20,000 people turn up and you start realizing that this is some kind of phenomenon going on here. You knew you were kind of living some sort of history.
HF How did he change in the campaign through your camera?
CO The candidate to a degree is shielded quite a lot by the force of people underneath him, working for him, doing everything. I am not sure Barack Obama really changed during the campaign, if at all. I think it would be extremely unusual if these huge crowds of adoring fans didn’t affect his ego. But really, Barack Obama didn’t change that much. The people that changed were the people around him.
Ommaney in New Hampshire covering Obama 1/6/2008
HF Aside from their obvious good looks, what is special about Barack and Michelle Obama? What makes them good subjects?
CO Well as a photographer, Barack Obama is a bit of a dream really. Because, having spent a lot of the time in the last ten years photographing generally white men in suits, it was always a struggle to pull a good frame out. It’s very easy to photograph Barack Obama. You need to get into a different business, if you can’t take good pictures of Barack Obama, given that he is extremely photographic. The second thing, and this may be sad more than anything else, he is one of the first politicians I’ve ever photographed who has let you get on with your job and has had a respect for what you are doing. In all the eight years, in my case ten years counting the two years of his campaign, photographing George Bush, it was always the case of: fight my way into some room, whether it would be in the White House or on the campaign. Bush would literally look at a watch and go, “Okay” – and literally half a minute later he would say, “You alright?” Someone would tap you on the shoulder and say, “Off you go, thank you.” And that happened pretty much constantly for eight years. Barack Obama has a kind of respect. He knows you’ve got to do something and he respects that you have got to this position where you are in the room with him and you obviously have some kind of idea how to behave and what piece you are doing and you’ve got the security clearance to get near him. Barack Obama lets you get on with your job. He does play to camera in a way because he is so good at it, but at the same time he lets you get on with it and that’s what makes Barack Obama so great to photograph; he lets you get on with your job. He’s a good subject.
HF Were you ever denied access during the Obama campaign?
CO Oh yeah, oh yeah, too many times to count. The biggest difficulty with all these things is when you are actually on the campaign trail you become quite close with people, whether it be the Robert Gibbs of the world, people who are essentially your gatekeepers, and you’re kind of a front man for your magazine. Although I am not writing for the magazine I’m still, at the end of the day, the person they are going to see on Monday or Tuesday when they pick up our magazine or read the web. I am usually the first person they are going to see. Quite often, if they felt we were being too objective, I would be the first person in the chain to be shot down. I would be the first person the door was closed on until they decided what to do with Newsweek. And that happened a couple of times quite dramatically and it has happened before and it will happen again.
HF Did that surprise you?
CO No, it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest, but it does make me kind of proud of my magazine. We could easily be another magazine; I won’t mention its name, who single-handedly, week after week, month after month just basically didn’t ask any questions. I don’t think that’s responsible. It didn’t help my cause, but at certain times I was kind of proud of my magazine because we question things or delved a little bit deeper.
HF Tell me the one photograph that you took that sums up this president.
CO I actually think, if not the best compositionally, or technically the best picture I feel I have taken by any means, but I think the picture that comes to mind is the picture I took of him on Inauguration Day of him pausing with his eyes closed.
HF The photo that was recently named the Political Shot of the Year by the White House Press Photographers’ Association?
CO Yes! It pretty much sums up everything to me because this was a man on the threshold of a whole new world and there were two million people standing in the mall. There were millions of people watching around the world and there was a single figure who was very much in the moment. He wasn’t freaking out; he wasn’t kind of just on an incredible ride where he could have been anywhere. This guy was very, very there. For a moment, for a just a couple of seconds, before he walked out to undergo this extraordinary transformation for him, he paused for a second and shut his eyes and thought about the magnitude of what was happening.
HF Were you there alone with him? Were there other cameras?
CO No, no, there was myself and the White House photographer, a guy named Pete Souza, and a Time magazine photographer.
HF How did you get that shot?
CO It’s funny because it’s called a dead zone. This little area is very strictly off camera, no one is allowed there except for the security people lined up down the sides. It’s the last second before this guy walks out. As I said, they call it the dead zone, so it’s the place where the president elect can go and gather his final thoughts before walking out and no one is going to talk to him. It’s kind of like a safe area for him. He closed his eyes for a few moments; literally a few seconds and then he crossed his hands and walked out. That very second, photographically, that kind of summed it all up for me.
HF Does he ever comment on your photographs?
CO A little bit. We used to get an occasional cover or spread inside Newsweek and it would get back to me that he liked a photograph.
HF Is political photography different than general news photography?
CO No, but I think if you are trying to get behind the scenes, if you trying to get unguarded moments, it is a very different ballgame. There are an awful lot of people who now handle every moment of a politician’s day and tell them what to say. That is news photography and that is what we see every day on our TV screens, in newspapers, and magazines. News photography is very different from behind the scenes photography of a politician and that is a very different ballgame.
HF How did you get the Obama assignment?
CO About 20 months ago I suppose, the magazine asked me about candidates that they were going to assign photographers to. I really didn’t have any interest in going flat out with the front-runners and I literally proposed to Michelle Molloy, who is the senior national news photo editor at Newsweek, to take this kind of semi-unheard of guy that I photographed back in 2002 or 2003 in Chicago. Just because I thought he would be a more interesting person. Part of me thought, well this could be over fairly quickly. But clearly it was a bit of a turnaround! If I was a betting man, if I am still involved in this business in 2012, I would like to put a bet on who I choose because I think I have a rather winning record with this one.
HF How are the Obamas different to photograph than the Bushes?
CO Like night and day. There is actually a huge Obama machine, let’s not kid ourselves. No cover, no spread is left to chance with the Obama team. They are well-organized, well thought out that’s for sure. And the Bushes were too, but the difference is the Obamas are more modern and they understand the power of good images much better than the Cheneys or the Bushes did. You know people look at pictures much more than they read words. I don’t think the Bushes ever really got that.
HF Do you have input in what goes on the cover of Newsweek when they are using your photo?
CO No.
HF Does that frustrate you?
CO Not in the slightest. The process of choosing the cover, I would know about it that week. I would liaise with Michelle and we would talk about what the theme of the cover was and we would go over some of the smaller details that go with me shooting a cover, like how much space we need and this and that. I will say no, I never have any art direction or suggestions. I will say that one of the beauties of shooting digital these days, unlike what we did five or ten years ago, when we sent 30 rolls of film into New York and then hope that they would pick something that was remotely acceptable. These days of course we edit on the road. We generally send in what we like. I am sure there are thousands of editors across America who are not happy about that.
HF Recently Ana Marie Cox wrote in The Washington Post that the media should do away with the White House press corps. What did you think about that?
CO On the record, I would go as far to stay that I don’t read or listen to a word she says. She has no clue about anything we do. Of course there is a place for the White House press corps, that’s where we get access, that’s where people have sources, that’s where people get their information. At the end of the day, it’s who you know and who you have a relationship with at the White House, who you get information from really, the real stuff. If they abolished the White House press corps, you would have very wishy-washy coverage; you would never get anything special. I’ve worked with journalists all over the world and I can genuinely say that all of the people I have met from the White House press corps are some of the most intuitive and most perceptive journalists I have ever met.
HF What made you decide on photojournalism as a career, instead of commercial photography or nature photography or fashion photography?
CO For me it was just the process of storytelling. I wanted to be in a position to somehow tell stories through my photography. Photography was the only thing I grew up wanting to do. It was the only thing I ever aspired to do. When I came out of college, I could have carried on with my family but I had no interest in sitting behind a desk. Photojournalism, with the chance to learn and inform, were the two motivating factors for me going into this business. After getting into it, I realized there was camaraderie in our line of work that is hard to find anywhere else. It’s a privileged lifestyle and let’s hope a privileged lifestyle for a few more years to come.
