When Pete Souza, the new official white house photographer, took Barack Obama’s portrait he used the Canon 5d Mark II. This is the first time a digital camera has been used for the president’s official photograph. To be fair though it was President Bush’s white house photographer, Eric Draper, who made the government’s transition from film to digital. Mr. Draper recounts that he got the job of Official White House photographer by approaching Mr Bush, shaking his hand and asking for it. 1 Draper said that when he started the job in 2001, the White House photo office was “way behind the times… It was a film process and it took four years to finally switch to digital,” 2

If Draper had taken Mr. Bush’s portrait in 2001 with a digital camera the best we could have expected was a 6 megapixel image from a Kodak DCS 660. I was out of the country when President Bush came into office and it feels personally fitting that I will be out of the country again as he leaves. This will be the second time I return to U.S. customs to see hanging on the wall a different President’s photo than the one when I left.