David Cameron has a personal photographer. It’s a big step for the coverage of politics.

In this, he follows, and surpasses, the example of Barrack Obama. Obama, like presidents of the United States before him, has a White House photographer – Pete Souza, a well-known magazine photographer who has assembled his own staff. Souza's role differs from previous photographers, however, in that he has been tasked with shooting studies which catch Obama, and his family, in intimate and even grouchy moments; and more importantly, making these shots available free to any outlet which cares to use them, through the net. Since they are – and are designed to be – the kind of shots any professional photographer would take anyway, they are already being widely used.

Cameron has gone one better: he has hired his photographer, who has become an employee of the Conservative Party, while still in opposition. One of his first outings was last Wednesday, following Cameron to the Garden of Remembrance in Westminster Abbey during the Armistice Day commemoration. The Daily Mirror, which broke the story last Thursday (12 November), wrote that the photographer, Andrew Parsons, “barked instructions and was sometimes just inches from the Tory supremo’s face. One shocked onlooker said, 'The photographer was snapping away at every opportunity'."

Leaving aside the propriety of the occasion, the large fact is that these images were put out on the net within a few hours – available to all. They showed the Conservative leader looking serious and concerned – the kind of image which one would expect, but shown in much greater detail than usual. On such occasions, the practice had been that the photographers held back, giving the politician the space in which to contemplate the graves and the names on them. In this case – according to The Daily Mirror, which has an anti-Conservative line – the photographer choreographed the event.

As New Labour learned media tactics from the Clinton aides, so Cameron is learning from Obama. Cash-strapped media are in no position to demand that their photographers cover stories for which free images are available. And if Cameron follows Obama further, he will have his wife give an interview to a popular woman’s magazine, as Michelle Obama did to Glamour magazine – and give a joint interview, with his wife, to talk about their marriage, as both he and Michelle did with the New York Times. We are seeing a major development: powerful politicians taking the image and the revelation into their own hands, and doing it on behalf of the media.