White House Photographer Uses iPhone 6 Plus to Shoot Presidential Decorations

[Maura]

TIME has a great story this week about a freelance White House photographer who used his iPhone 6 Plus camera to capture the unveiling of Christmas decorations at the president’s residence.

Brooks Kraft has been a photographer at the White House since 2000, and has taken many, many pictures of Christmas festivities at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue over the years, but this year he chose to use his iPhone 6 Plus camera to capture the scene.

“I’ve covered this event about 10 times before,” Kraft told TIME. “It’s a very light event, obviously, and the president is not even there. So there’s no real, intrinsic news value, which is a good opportunity to try out new gear that I might use later in more news-oriented environments.”

Kraft said that he used the square format to take the photos on his iPhone 6 Plus. “I thought that format would work well with the formality of the architecture in the White House, and it was a different way to look at this event—compositionally.”

Kraft added that he was very happy with the results.

“The new iPhones do a really good job of balancing colors right out of the camera…The iPhone has a lot of depth-of-field, which allows me to shoot the [picture] and move around quickly, which worked in this situation because we were sort of ushered through the rooms and didn’t have a lot of time.”

Kraft likes to use both the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, but for this particular shoot he preferred to use the iPhone 6 Plus, saying that “there were situations where I was holding the camera above my head to try to make vertical lines more parallel on the edges of the frame, and in that case having the larger screen helped me.”

Finally, Kraft said that he’s not ready to give up his DSLR just yet, but finds the iPhone a helpful addition to his equipment.

“I notice that people just don’t react the same way [when you’re using an iPhone]. If you are looking to capture something candid, people are so used to seeing mobile devices that their reaction time is slower. You have a better chance of getting the shot, and that was the case at the White House.”

Source: TIME

Photo credit: Brooks Kraft - TIME