Doug Mills has been in the Oval Office thousands of times since he started covering the White House in 1983, mostly for rushed and crowded photo ops. He recently photographed virtually every inch of the room in 600 images that our colleagues stitched together to create a 3-D view of the gilded spectacle President Trump has made of it.
But even for Doug, who won his third Pulitzer Prize last year — for pictures of the attempted assassination of Mr. Trump at a campaign event in Pennsylvania — The Times’s nearly two-hour interview with the president this week was extraordinary. He thought he might be asked to leave after 10 or 15 minutes but ended up staying the entire time, including an hourlong off-the-record phone call that President Trump took from the president of Colombia, and an impromptu tour of the residence. At times, Doug sat on the floor to avoid the gaze of the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt.
He brought three Sony A1 II camera bodies into the Oval, with a 24-millimeter lens, a 50-millimeter lens and a 135-millimeter lens. Plus a Gitzo monopod that allowed him to hoist a camera (with the 24-millimeter lens) about 15 feet to create a bird’s-eye view — something that has become a Doug Mills signature and that was requested by his editor, Marisa Schwartz Taylor.
He emerged having snapped about 3,700 frames, the first at 5:08 p.m., the last at 8:24, when the tour began (no cameras or cellphones were allowed). He filed 41 of those for editors to choose from. Doug was just outside the White House on Thursday when we talked by phone about the experience. These are edited excerpts from our conversation.
Do you like shooting in the Oval, or is it hard to make something fresh and new in a place that has been photographed so much?
Every time you go in that room, you see something you didn’t see the last time you were there. He adds something weekly if not daily. People give him things, or he sees something that he likes. There’s a fairly new Jackie Kennedy small little 8×10 beautiful painting hanging up near the fireplace — I had not seen that before.
I pinch myself every time I come in there. It’s just an incredible office to be in. It’s a unique place to be able to photograph in.
Tell me about the bird’s-eye view. You famously used the technique in 2017 when the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey was testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Why do you love it?
It’s one of my staples around here. Whenever you go into these events, any time the whole press corps comes in there, and we’re all just focused on the president. I give people perspective.
If you’re at home, if you’ve never been in the Oval Office, what’s it look like when there are 50 reporters in there? What’s it look like when the president is meeting with a head of state? What’s it look like when the president is speaking to a group of reporters from The New York Times?
Did you start shooting a lot right at the beginning because you were worried about getting kicked out? Or do you take it slowly, wait for your moment, so as not to attract too much attention?
I’m the quietest one in the room. My cameras are completely silent. I’m not moving around a lot. You’re limited because he’s sitting behind the desk. There’s a recorder in the foreground — that’s an obstacle. I had four reporters — those are obstacles.
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Karoline had said it’s OK if you come in at the top and then peel out, so I thought at any time she might say, OK, I think you have enough. Thankfully, Karoline never asked me to leave. I think that’s mainly because the president’s very comfortable having me around. If there’s something that comes out, a folder that says “Top Secret” on it, I put my cameras away. I know I can’t photograph that stuff.
Speaking of the president’s comfort with you, he called you out by name on Monday night during a speech at the Kennedy Center, saying: “Make me look thin for a change, Doug. You are making me look a little heavy. I’m not happy about that.” Which Stephen Colbert had a little fun with.
He has told me before he doesn’t like certain photographs because they make him look fat.
OK, back to the Oval. You made a bunch of interesting portraits of President Trump’s face behind and reflected through a glass of water. What was that all about?
When I saw the glass, I was like, OK, glass half-full, glass half-empty. That’s one of the things in my life. I always try to make the glass half full. I try to look at that side of things.
I’ve never done that before. It’s a wacky kind of different angle. Because I had pretty much everything I needed at that point, I felt like, OK, I can play a little. Wow, can I make this work? I had to change the depth of field. I was shooting a very, very shallow depth of field. With something like that, you needed the compression of the lens — I had to jack up the F-stop.
There’s another interesting series where he is reflected in a mirror as he sits at his desk.
There’s a mirror on a desk to his right, the one that Abe Lincoln is on. I’ve seen the table top before. I’ve seen the reflection. But it’s not something that we get that close to when we’re in there for a normal photo op. The Secret Service will ask you to come back.
Because I had the freedom and the time to do it, I just kept inching up and inching up. He doesn’t mind me being that close.
And then you made some photos of the president with the four reporters, which is kind of unusual. Usually, we’re trying to stay out of the frame. But I suppose this time, the reporters were an important part of the story, since the interview was an event unto itself.
It’s one of those awkward moments for a photographer. You’re like, I just want the president himself — but he’s giving them a tour, I’m not going to wreck his moment. He was, like, showing you around his home.
I would have liked to have made a solo image of him somewhere on the colonnade at night by himself. But I didn’t want to break up the moment. I didn’t want to hijack the interview. I wanted it to be as organic as it was. You never know what’s too much.
There’s even one (at the top of this article) where we can see you, reflected in the mirror.
It was surreal. We walk up and down that colonnade all the time. And I think, wouldn’t it be great if he was standing in front of that mirror one day? Maybe I’ll ask them for it. Maybe he’ll pose for it. I think that’d be a great picture, him standing in front of that mirror.
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