What does a typical day at the White House look like?

I set out to capture a sense of everyday life at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, armed with basic knowledge from a course in video editing at the Kalish workshop. Starting with a couple of early experiments of the Marine Guards at the West Wing and a daily press briefing, I was hooked on time-lapse sequences that came to life when they were played at high speed.

I began taking along extra cameras, tripods, clamps and pocket wizard radio remote triggers. This involved slightly more work as I had to start thinking of the best place for a time lapse sequence that may not make a good still image itself, but rather as part of a larger project.

From the East Room, where most official functions are held, to the Rose Garden, the South Lawn and the West Wing, I set the cameras up to fire one picture every 5 to 10 seconds before, during and after the events. Thousands of pictures were shot over the course of those weeks, and I slowly began to put together a narrative that follows what we typically photograph on any given day at the White House.

Shooting “a day in the life” would have been nice, but it was impossible to have cameras in all the locations on one particular day.

All of what you see in this project was made with just two cameras on the time lapse and one hand-held camera — it’s a very basic set up. Shooting handheld, I had to shoot major burst sequences with long lenses, all the while ensuring that I didn’t move the camera around too much. Even slight movements can render an entire sequence unusable. Tripods are too cumbersome to use at the White House and you have to stay mobile to make pictures, so I would innovate by propping myself against a ladder and holding my breath or putting the handheld cameras on the ground — whatever it takes to shoot a short burst without moving the camera at all.

This worked well for the walkout of the Oval Office in the segment where President Obama walks towards us. That’s a 70-200mm lens on the ground, prefocussed and composed with live view switched on, as I hold the camera perfectly still as he walks in and out of the frame.

Making it all come together in one coherent package is done in the edit. The most challenging aspects: Being a newcomer to video editing, seeing a project in terms of a narrative, not just in single moments, and getting my head around the 8,000 images that sat in a folder called “Multimedia” as the weeks wore on. I tried to edit for the project as I went along, so that when it came to putting together the sequence, there would be chunks of loosely finished product ready to drop into the appropriate part of the story.

Models, tall models, skinny models, Russian models, French models…sounds exotic? Yeah, not so much. Covering fashion week in New York sounds like a pretty glamorous assignment but it could hardly be further from it.

Shooting fashion week has more in common with running a marathon than it does running a sprint. There are 8 days, some 75 shows in the tents, dozens more off site, plus preparation photos. We shoot the models backstage and the designers getting ready, we shoot the front row celebrities arriving and we shoot the show from the pit.

The pit could also be called the pit of despair. Imagine taking 200 photographers with all their requisite gear, cameras, laptops, ladders, monopods, boxes and cases, putting them in a space that realistically 50 photographers could work comfortably in. Throw in 14 hour days, little regard for hygiene and an open bar in the evening and you have a recipe for a sociological experiment gone awry.

I personally shot dozens of shows and filed hundreds of photos. The images after a few days begin to homogenize and making something different becomes a real challenge. As a photographer I am always trying to redefine my visual narrative and create interesting dynamic photos.

Enter my newest toy, the Sony DSC-T77. It is advertised at Sony’s thinnest camera and with a Zeiss lens it makes pretty impressive photos. Add to that the huge screen and the fact that it is totally silent, has an awesome macro mode, live screen for shooting off the hip, shoots in black and white with a wide exposure latitude and you have a powerful documentary tool.

It is a strange thing when a photographer pulls up a big camera with a fast lens, it tends to put people in a defensive mode, they know you are professional and think you might have some ulterior motive for taking the photograph. Pull out a little camera and they think you are just taking pictures, the subjects are much more at ease and working with the little camera is more fun. Kind of like Jim Young using his Holga, you are never quite sure exactly what you are going to get.

Photographers have always looked around them at what is available to them to best do the job. Many photographers like Young bring Holgas with them or a Leica or Contax G2. They use these tools to create a different kind of image, one that is different than their bread and butter cameras, their Canon Mark III or 5d Mark IIs with their L lenses.

I will be experimenting with this camera more and more (I am really enjoying taking pictures on the subway system here in New York as I ride back and forth to Brooklyn and taking photos out of taxi windows).

Ok, back to the marathon.

Click here for a slideshow of images.

KSC Photo Blog from Scott Audette on Vimeo.

Reuters photographer Scott Audette documents the Reuters crew braving alligators and snakes and long hot days as they prepare for the launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour.