If you want to try and figure out what sort of president a person is going to be, the best people to ask early on are the photographers. We don't get the handouts. We don't get the spin sessions. All we know is what we see. We are looking into the soul of that president.

And we're highly trained to do that. That's our job. And so, as a result, these pictures can have tremendous consequences. That is one of the reasons why I feel as a photographer, I have an enormous responsibility.

When you're covering the White House, it is boring beyond belief. You spend most of your time sitting in a pressroom, dozing. And then you have 20 or 30 seconds in which to take a picture. And that picture could turn out to be the most important picture of your career.

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