From the Archives: Baghdad 2003

Baghdad, Iraq March 2003 A US Army tank fires from a protective position in the outskirts of Baghdad during the first days of the Iraq war. (Essdras M Suarez/ Globe Staff) BEHIND THE SCENES: While trying to make it into Baghdad after the coalition forces took the city. We were forced to take shelter in the outskirts of the city with a US armored division. Every once in a while we would here mortar fire sound coming from far away and then the American tanks would respond in kind. Despite all the raucous I still managed to sleep a solid six hours. TECHNICAL STUFF: Shot with a 80-200 Nikon D-1h at some ungodly high ISO pushing the limits of the camera. Shot in aperture priority. Exposure had to have been something like an 1/8th of a second at 2.8. (PS The reporter and I were not embedded. There two other teams of photographer and writer and I was one of the two that was not with the military. My friend photographer extraordinaire Dominic Chavez was the other shooter not with troops.)