Weekend With Shades - Sunday - June 28

APPEALING SUBJECTS
BY CRAIG MANSON
A Monthly - Weekend With Shades - Column

That's right; good ol' Uncle Sam has a treasure trove of photographs dating from the earliest days of photography in America and he'll let you have [most of] them at no cost and free of copyright restrictions. You already knew that, didn't you? You know all about the Library of Congress's various collections; you know that the Smithsonian has a Flickr site; and of course you know about the National Archives photo collections.

In fact, those collections just barely scratch the surface of the millions of photographs that the government owns, and which may be available to you. Virtually every government agency from the CIA to the Natural Resources Conservation Service has photographs in their archives that you may be interested in having. So how do you get your hands on Uncle Sam's photo treasures?