The story behind that shirtless Biden photo

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When President JOE BIDEN and first lady JILL BIDEN decide to go to the beach, it’s a fairly complicated ordeal. It involves local police, the Coast Guard, Secret Service agents and numerous aides, including those tasked with shepherding the small pool of reporters who follow the president wherever he goes.

On Sunday, as the Bidens arrived at Delaware’s Rehoboth Beach, they were kept high atop the dunes. The press pool noted some details of what they wore — bright blue shorts, a navy blue shirt, hat and sneakers for the president; a white top, blue skirt, hat and flip-flops for the first lady — but little else. They observed the Bidens parking themselves on some beach chairs beneath an umbrella and beginning to read. Then after 12 minutes, they were escorted away and waited in vans for the next three hours until the Bidens headed home.

So when photos of the shirtless president on the beach started lighting up the internet, it came as something of a surprise to the journalists in the pool vans — and to the White House.

It just so happened that a few other journalists were on the beach that day. ERIC GELLER, who covers cybersecurity for The Messenger, was spending the afternoon with his family, just a short walk south of where the Bidens had camped out.

“When we saw online that he was there, we walked up to see what the scene was like,” Geller said.

The sand right around the Bidens was clear of other beachgoers. The Secret Service agents working the scene were “giving them lots of space,” Geller said. “But the beach along the water line was completely open.”

After being wanded by Secret Service agents, who maintained a large perimeter around Biden, Geller and others were allowed to pass the area where the president was sitting as long as they remained down by the surf. Geller, who said he was standing roughly 30 feet away at one point, pulled out his cell phone and zoomed in.

Geller captured the president standing shirtless in his bright blue trunks, tennis shoes and aviators, with his familiar navy baseball cap with the logo of the Beau Biden Foundation turned backward. And Biden, hands on his hips, looked to be staring right back at him.

At 4:44 p.m., more than 90 minutes after the pool was escorted away from the beach, Geller tweeted three photos of the president, who, his caption noted, was “enjoying a gorgeous beach day here in Rehoboth.”

And that, folks, is how an iconic presidential photo gets made.