Time's photo blog

Time's photo blog is an interesting thing. On occasion, I've gotten some very good WH interior photos from the site, altho they tend to be odd and ambiguous. Today's photo is of a "lower press office," which I assume to mean an office belonging to the press secretary's staff located in the ground floor of the West Wing and not an office shared by press correspondents from The Peoria Thrifty Nickel and Inside Edition.

UPDATE: Anonymous explains that it's actually a press secretary staff office off the briefing room.

A couple of days ago—as was noted in comments by Winnipeg's Mike B—Time labeled a picture of the Diplomatic Reception Room as the "Indian Treaty Room" (which is a big meeting hall in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building across from the White House). Anyone who reads the comments on this blog knows that I have no room to criticize anyone for mislabeling WH locations, but that was an odd one.

Generally, the pictures are not of the action of an event but of preparation for it or of figures at the margins, often members of the press themselves. They expanded it to allow for pictures of the "race to the White House" and not just the WH itself, which is a little annoying. Sometimes I think it's really meant as an artsy outlet for the creative tendencies of the WH press photographers, but some of the shots are just boring or newsy.

Mentions

Hey, super trivia deep background king Ken Jennings mentioned us. He's looking for portraits of presidents suitable for reproduction. (I know, I know: most first ladies found their husbands suitable for reproduction. He already thought of that joke. He has a brain the size of Andrew Jackson's cheese wheel.)

The WaPo also mentioned us, in regard to the movies and TV page.

And the AP references the Queen's Bedroom page.

More Reagan than you can shake a stick at

Logan P sent me a double helping of Reagan-era color photos from two different sources, one of which is the Dec 1981 issue of Architectural Digest (which, coincidentally, I had just bought on Ebay and which hadn't arrived yet). That gave me my first look at the Master Bedroom Chinese wallpaper in color (a little underwhelming, actually) and Nancy's study (a little overwhelming--it's not Reagan red; it's mint green!).

I'm pursuing permission from AD (Conde Nast, actually), but I'll post them soon either way and take them down if I have too. I think they fall into fair use anyway, given that the site is purely educational, the pictures are of public interest, and the images I post are too small for print purposes, but I don't want to step on copyrights where they apply.

Check the What's New page.

Update: Okay--posted 'em. Boy, they look great. Thanks again, Logan!

The new curtains

Got a note from visitor Lee pointing out the new curtains around the White House and directing me to some pics of the Library, Vermeil Room, and East Room on Flickr. Good find, Lee! I've posted them and am trying to get permission to keep them from the owner, but I can't find an e-mail address. (Mail me, Amber!)

PS-- Dennis is still reporting issues with the Blogger comment system. But I don't get any problem even when logged out and commenting as a regular user. Anybody else having trouble? I'll check the Blogger help.

Tourist pics

I posted a couple more tourist pics of the public rooms: a 2001 Christmas pic of the Blue Room and one of the Vermeil Room. At the same time, I fixed the credits of these and other tourist photos to link to the site where they came from and, if I hadn't already tried to contact them, sent a note requesting official permission to use them.

I think I'll add a spot on the About page requesting folks to send links to their WH tourist photos. I'm afraid I might get 300 pictures of "Tiffany" and "Josh" posing in front of Christmas trees, tho.

PBR Photographer identified

I got a note from Jeffrey James Bryan Carpenter requesting credit for the terrific photos that illustrate the Press Briefing Room. I don't recall where those pictures came from, so I never knew who to credit. If any other visitors find uncredited photos of theirs that I've used to illustrate the White House, please contact me. I'm very happy to give credit and link the credit to any page you like or to remove them from the site.