Eight years of George W. Bush: a photo essay

12:35 PM PT, Nov 13 2008

It started for Eric Draper at a Christmas Party at the governor's mansion in Austin in 2000. That's when the 30-something Associated Press photographer from Albuquerque, N.M., went up to Texas Gov. George W. Bush and told him, straight on, that he wanted to be his personal White House photographer.

"I didn't blink," Draper recalled in an interview this week. "He said he'd get back to me. A week later I was packing."

White House photographer Eric Draper Eight years later, Draper will soon be packing again. The longest-serving of Bush's photographers, Draper oversees a staff of 12 photographers, plus interns. He's the veteran, the one who started at the beginning and plans to, as the president likes to say, sprint to the finish at the end.

The most remarkable thing about the job? "One of the things about this job that I never anticipated was the volume," he said, "the amount of moments and history in a single day." The shooter recalled that when he came to Washington to interview for the job, Chief of Staff Andrew Card told him that working at the White House was like drinking through a fire hose. "And he was right," Draper said. "There are a lot of things to document."

The photo above shows the president outside the Oval Office before the start of a morning national security briefing, just five months after the 9/11 terror attack. While others see changes in the president's face with the weight of eight years, Draper said he sees the same man. "I always witnessed exactly the same president for the last eight years -- just as sharp, friendly, warm as he ever was," he said. "Obviously in eight years you see a change, but my perspective hasn't really changed."

In the photo above, both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney check their watches in the Oval Office before leaving for the swearing-in ceremony for Secretary of State Colin Powell on Jan. 26, 2001. It was destined to be a White House with a reputation for promptness.

Draper, a graduate of Cal State Long Beach, almost blew the opportunity to chronicle the history of this presidency on Day One. A veteran of campaign journalism, he attended the ceremony on the West Steps of the U.S. Capitol when former President Clinton officially handed off to Bush. And then, by force of habit, he jumped into Clinton's press van. A colleague told him, "Eric, your guy is staying."

So he scampered up the steps of the Capitol, in time to catch history.

Perhaps no moment was as filled with tension as the scene aboard Air Force One on Sept. 11, 2001, when the president and his top aides looked out the window to observe the F-16 fighter jets escorting him back to Washington.

With a just a few months left on the Bush administration, Draper shared with us some of his favorite pictures. The one below is Bush driving his pickup truck on his ranch in Crawford, Texas, on Aug. 7, 2001. Bush will be returning to Texas in January, though first lady Laura Bush is relocating the family to Dallas.

As for Draper, he's back to New Mexico in January, but his photographs -- all 800,000 of them -- will be part of history forever.