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This photo, along with the simple caption “Four more years” became the most tweeted and most-liked-on-Facebook photograph ever, and it did so with incredible speed. We thought you’d like to hear the story behind it. It’s probably not what you imagined. To get the scoop, we went straight to the woman who snapped the photo herself. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Scout Tufankjian.
Giz: Tell us a little about your background.
Scout Tufankjian: I’ve been shooting professionally for about 12/13 years, and my career has been a real mix. I started shooting in Northern Ireland (I was 18 and wanted to go someplace where English was spoken but was cheaper than London), and since then I’ve covered international stories like the Egyptian Revolution and its aftermath, the Haitian Earthquake and its aftermath (as photographers, we tend to do a lot of aftermaths), and the Second Intifada.
Giz: How long have you been shooting Barack Obama?
ST: In 2006, I got sent to New Hampshire to cover a booksigning by the junior senator from Illinois, and decided to spend the next two and a half years covering what became his winning presidential campaign. So through sheer chance and pigheadedness, I became the only photojournalist to cover the entirety of the 2008 Obama campaign. After the campaign was over, I did a book, Yes We Can: Barack Obama’s History-Making Presidential Campaign, and went back to doing international work.
I started shooting exclusively for the campaign in August 2012. I think they probably remembered me and my work from ’08 and called me up when the campaign started ramping up. There are two photographers: me and Christopher Dilts. I focus on POTUS and he covers VPOTUS and FLOTUS.
Giz: How did “The Photo” come about?
ST: This picture was taken in Dubuque, IA on August 15th. Iowa is always a pretty special place for the Obamas, since Iowans were really the first people outside of Chicago to embrace the Obama candidacy, and we had been on a bus tour for three days. This was the first event the First Lady had been at and they hadn’t seen each other for a few days. Because I’m a total sap and am also relatively recently married, I find their relationship to be totally inspirational in terms of the respect they have for each other, so I always try to focus on them as a couple, rather than as public figures.
Giz: How many shots did you take of “The Moment,” and how did you decide on that shot?
ST: I think I got one or two shots from that moment. I’m not a heavy shooter as a general rule, and almost never use the motor drive on my camera, so I wouldn’t have gotten more than one or two. I definitely had no idea that it would be as popular as it is, although I don’t kid myself that its popularity has anything at all to do with the framing of the image, etc. It’s all about how people feel about the Obama family.
Giz: What camera/lens did you use?
ST: I shot this with a Nikon D3 and an 85mm 1.4 prime lens. I really only shoot primes (I have an 80-200 lens that I carry and almost never use), and I mostly shoot wide open, which is high risk, but high reward. When you nail it, the picture can be beautiful and kind of dreamy with a three-dimensionality that I love, but when you don’t, it’s useless and out of focus. You have to be willing to miss things (and not get too caught up in the stuff that you missed) to shoot that way.
The rest of my kit includes a D700, a 28 f1.8, a 28 f2.8, a 35 f2 and a 50 f1.4. I’m also borrowing a D800 from Nikon, which is a quieter camera, so that the clicks don’t interfere with private backstage moments, and I’ve rented a Nikon 35 1.4 that I love with all my heart, but doesn’t currently fit in my budget.
Giz: Any tips for capturing spontaneous moments?
ST: My main advice would be not to pre-plan too much. If you try to give yourself a shot list or look for specific moments you could miss something amazing. Also, give yourself a license to wander, but don’t second guess yourself if you want to sit on one person for 45 minutes waiting for that perfect moment.
Robert Capa once said (perhaps apocryphally) that the most important thing about photojournalism was to like people and let them know that you like them. If you are interested in people, that makes the job exponentially easier.
Other than that, a lot of it is luck and preparation. Like for the bear hug picture, which also went viral, I just happened to be in exactly the right place with exactly the right lens, which doesn’t always happen. And sometimes, embarrassingly, I don’t even notice that something is happening until afterward, like with the kissing kids picture that Gawker covered (for some reason the better crop is not on the public Flickr, but we definitely tweeted it). I would love to say that I saw that happening, but I totally didn’t.
Finally, cast a wide net. I’m not saying to lean on the motordrive, which I think is kind of weird and alienating (you don’t want your subject to feel like they are being machine gunned), but the more pictures you take, the more often you are going to get something great.
You can check out a lot of Scout’s amazing work at her website, and her book Yes We
Can: Barack Obama’s History-Making Presidential Campaign is available on Amazon.
Thanks, Scout!
A UK hater and his racist wife…. Nice pic!
Great article, nice to hear how these people work.
I’m guessing the bear hug guy wasn’t too popular with the Secret Service.
Good article
As a side note and this is not a comment on this article but the uk news in general. why the hell do we care so much about american politics. I mean for gods sake the BBC reports them as if they are our own elections with a whole election night special!!!! Do they do this when the French or Germans have an election? or Australia? no. It really sickens me how we bolster the opinion that USA is amazing and in charge of the world by elevating them to that status in our media. a simple this guy won everyone carry on with your lives sufices
Imagine if Bush had not been elected in 2000. I don’t know what that world would look like now, but you can bet it would look a lot different.
Would ‘President Gore’ have gone into Iraq? Afghanistan? How would he have reacted to 9/11? Would the global economic crisis have happened the way it did?
Like it or not, the US is the last remaining superpower. Their actions have repercussions on a global scale. They don’t always ‘lead the world’ (thankfully), but they do shape it more than any other nation.
And where are the large numbers of news articles about China??
and Japan and south korea leading our technology?
Of course excuses can always be found of why america, but not 2 elections ago we didnt report on their elections like we do now. Its a new phenomenon thats only happened for the last couple of elections. our news got interested in bush due to the actions and closeness of our governments in the Blair Iraq era and from then on we have reported when for years they didnt when America were more powerful than they are now.
I’m seeing plenty of coverage of the Chinese appointments, including live coverage of Hu Jintao’s opening speech at the congress. Yes, it’s nowhere near the level of the US coverage, but I can see a few reasons for that.
There’s no public election in China, and much of the proceedings happen behind closed doors. There’s just less going on for the news to cover.
The other nations you mentioned aren’t global superpowers and they aren’t English speaking. I realise that sounds shallow, but it’s harder for the press to cover proceedings when the main protagonists aren’t speaking English, and there’s less public interest as such.
Also, the nature of the media has changed dramatically from what it was 30 years ago. Back then, 24-hour news channels and websites did not exist, nor was there particularly a demand for them. People were just happy to get their news the day after it happened. So yeah, these days the coverage is far more extensive.
Have you considered that US news happens at a great time to fill what is otherwise dead repetitive time on 24 hour news networks and since sky is part of the same group as fox news they have an easy in to us coverage and where sky goes the BBC must follow
Also before Bush news coverage was a hundredth of what it is now. With only four channels and no internet to speak of, I’d say there was forum for this kind of information. Coverage has increased inline with ways in which the world consumes it.