What no one tells you about filming your leaders.

We’ve photographed Angela Merkel in Berlin. We’ve worked with ministers, generals and chief executives, and in the minefields of Iraq. People always ask what these people are like in front of the camera. The honest answer tends to disappoint: uncomfortable. All of them.

Media training doesn’t fix it. Neither do decades of press conferences. A general who has commanded thousands of soldiers can still stiffen when the lens turns towards them. A room forgets what you said; a camera keeps it. For someone whose authority depends on how they are seen, a permanent record is a real risk, and they know it.
So they protect themselves, usually in one of two ways.

The first is performance: the practised answer, the well-timed pause, the face they’ve worn to a thousand press calls. It’s easy to read that as fake. We don’t think it is. It’s armour. If they control exactly what you see, you can’t catch anything they didn’t choose to show.

The second is harder to spot. They quietly stop trying. They sit where you ask, answer what you ask, and give nothing more. They rarely know they’re doing it. Psychologically it’s a clever move: if I didn’t really try, the picture isn’t really me. The gap between the image and the person stays open, and the person stays safe.
Different behaviour, same fear: being seen properly and found wanting.

That’s why making people comfortable doesn’t work. Coffee, small talk and a friendly crew don’t reach that fear. What reaches it is removing the test, so they genuinely believe there is no right version to deliver and nothing they can get wrong. Once they believe it, the armour has nothing left to protect them from.

That’s usually when the real person turns up. In our experience, they’re more interesting than the one who walked in, every time.