I suspect Souza shot, edited, and processed his images every day. I also suspect he did not have a bucket of full SD cards waiting for him at the end of it. As White House photographer, he was responsible for the timely dissemination of images of the matters to which the President attended on a daily basis. It is not as if he shot two million images over eight years, and then in the ninth year decided to go back over them to see what he had.
Granted that Peter had to do work in a timely manner, but do you think all 2 million images got processed and edited in the 2922 days (365 days of a year times eight plus two extra days for a leap year). Most images I suspect were never edited, processed and were simply saved.
I think we both could agree that only either very timely or most important images got processed, printed and distributed. If you do the math the average per day of shots was 684.46 shots per day.
I also suspect that Peter Souza had a staff of help like assistants, or had an editor who likely helped manage the work flow. I know at the interview I attended he spoke of a crew of people that he worked with. My impression is that as Whitehouse Photographer he was ultimately responsible, but he also had a reasonable amount of staff.
The archive that was created still remains daunting. Even with a "rough-cut" Peter expressed agony in selecting the images for his book.
I did do some editing in examining my negatives right after development for content, framing, composition, tonality, image quality, mood, tone, grain, context. I found contact sheets were not needed because of enough experience and a trained eye. Pretty much like Peter Souza I could do a "rough-cut" and knew what images I want to print. Granted not everyone has enough experience or the skill to do this.
The few images I had funds to have printed verified my editing skills from the negative. 7K rolls of film taught me something and trained my eye. It promoted skill and consistency also.
Cal
