Chaudhary was the official White House videographer during Barack Obama’s first term. In other words, he was like your annoying friend who is constantly taking photos and posting them to Facebook, except he was capturing history.

No matter your politics, it’s hard not to think, “Wow, hanging with the president all day and shooting YouTube videos. How’d he get that sweet gig?” The simple answer: By being a total nerd in his youth.

Chaudhary attended a Junior State of America summer session as a 16-year-old and stayed in touch with a girl he met there named Kate Albright-Hanna. Kate went on to become a producer at CNN, the first to shoot her own video, most famously footage of Howard Dean’s notorious “scream” on the evening of the 2004 Iowa caucus. Four years later, she signed up to work for the Obama campaign.

This is part of a storied but accelerating tradition, of course, of political leaders bringing in journalists to help shape their story. And in this age of social media, political campaigns and the White House often cut out the middlemen (the pack of journalists trailing politicians) and tell their stories directly to the American people.

To help in this effort, Kate called her nerd camp buddy, Arun, who’d been inspired by Michael Moore to combine his interests in film and political advocacy.

Arun was then teaching at New York University. He signed up, thinking simply, “I can help.”

At first, Kate and Arun were the official documentarians of the campaign. But when they were recording a simple birthday message Obama made for a volunteer (a video meant for an internal audience), they realized, as Chaudhary puts it, “that the in-between was more interesting.” They decided to focus less on formal events and more on the intimate moments that would make potential supporters feel like they were a part of the campaign.

Chaudhary would wait for the then-senator to be introduced at rallies, and when the crowd was at maximum volume, the candidate would turn to the camera to say hi. I asked if Obama, famously private, minded the ever-present camera. “No,” says Chaudhary, “he got it right away,’ recognizing the impact intimacy would have on his relationship to the voter.

Once in the White House, the job changed, as did Chaudhary’s wardrobe, up to a point. Typically a very casual dresser, Chaudhary wore a suit, but kept wearing his low-top sneakers, and his explosion of hair. He no longer reported to the communications team. He was official archivist, reporting up through the non-political staff.

As our second beer arrives, Chaudhary tells me that presidents can’t really say no to the White House photographer. Presidents have adjusted how they used those photos while in office. (Harding and LBJ made themselves more available; Nixon and Clinton were more controlling, though no less interested in trying to use images to their political benefit). But video was still so new that there were no rules, and President Obama could say no. That Chaudhary had been on the campaign made the president more receptive. Chaudhary, in the course of killing all my hopes for gossip about the president off-camera, says, “He’s the same guy in private and in public,” so he didn’t worry it would catch him doing something wrong.

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