Oh Crop!

Things don’t always show up in the paper like you thought they would.

A story I shot last month which was published recently fit a photo into a different size and shape on the front page. Seeing a very horizontal photo cropped into a vertical never really makes a photographer feel very warm and fuzzy. It happens and I understand the process.

I am not always happy about things like this but I get it.

Even with most of the content cropped out of this horizontal image into a vertical head shot, the most important thing to remember is that the photo got published and the story told.

The funny thing about the above photo, which is my favorite from the entire shoot, is that it really was an after thought and not much more than a parting grab shot as I was leaving.

The story we were trying to illustrate with Jane Horton was how most people are unaware of the meaning of a gold star banner hanging in a window of a military family.

The gold star represents a military family member was killed in action. Jane had lost her husband in Afghanistan.

Trying to show that gold star in any photo had eluded me completely so going after the portrait just after sunset was the only option.

The process was not overly complicated with a couple of SB800′s inside and out of the house but it took some time to get it just right. I was pretty happy with how the posed portrait turned out and was glad that I took the time to make it happen.

I thought this portrait would be the photo to illustrate this story.

I finished packing up all of my gear in the dark after shooting the portrait of Jane and the gold star hanging in the window of her Tulsa home. As I was standing in the driveway saying goodbye, Jane was there talking to USA Today reporter Gregg Zoroya while still holding the American flag which draped her husbands casket illuminated by an outdoor light fixture on her garage. Along with a number of small flags planted along the driveway and the moody sky, a really striking image was right there.

There was still a bit of ambient light left lingering in the sky and with the ISO cranked up on the Nikon D3, I was able to fire off a few parting frames as Jane and Gregg said goodbye in front of her garage.

No strobes, no posing. Just a really nice moment.

In hindsight with the way the story was presented on the front of the paper, the portrait with Jane and the gold star in in the window might have been a better edit and fit the space on the front better.

But when is a photographer ever happy with an edit?

Bridge over River Euphrates

A Company/11th Engineer Battalion SFC Brian Raines at Objective Peach, Iraq, April 3, 2003

There was a really big surprise waiting for me this morning when I checked my email.

A note from an Army public affairs office at Fort Leonard Wood, home of the U.S. Army’s Maneuver Support Center of Excellence in Missouri, was asking permission to use a photo I shot in Iraq in 2003 for publication.

About a year ago, the U.S. Army Engineer Museum, also located on Fort Leonard Wood, reached out to me knowing I had been with Alpha Company, 11th Engineering Battalion attached to the 3rd Battalion, 69th Regiment which crossed the Euphrates River in zodiac boats and successfully cleared a vital bridge of explosives during the initial few weeks of the Iraq War in 2003.

I had always just assumed that any exhibit would have one or two photographs on display.

I had no idea that the Army Engineer Museum would recreate one of the photographs into a large museum exhibit. The exhibit depicts the image of A Company/11th Engineer Battalion SFC Brian Raines dangling over the Euphrates River trying to cut the lines leading to explosives in the bridge columns.

Jack Gruber photo 2003 (left) and U.S. Army Engineer Museum exhibit 2011 (right)

As time closes in on the ten year mark since the U.S. rolled into Iraq,  I wonder how the history of things that happened will be remembered.  I have this uneasy feeling that some of that history might be forgotten all together in the future.

I am not talking about the politics of why the U.S invaded Iraq. I am thinking more about what happened on the ground. The stories of soldiers and marines who fought the fights. These events didn’t make the big headlines.  They happened if a photographer was there to capture the moment or not.

If I hadn’t been there to witness firsthand some of those things, I might have thought it all just Hollywood fantasy myself.

That is why it is very humbling to me to be part of something that is dedicated to telling the true story and keeping history on the right path.

This bridge mission the U.S. Army Engineer Museum was interested in was known in the U.S. Army plan of attack as Objective Peach.

Little things that add to the big picture of the Iraq War like Object Peach really weren’t that little that day.

This was no movie set. This was real.

Objective Peach was just southwest of Baghdad about 20 miles. On April 2 and 3, 2003, the Army’s 3rd Battalion, 69th Regiment Armor led by Lieutenant Colonel Ernest “Rock” Marcone began a river assault to capture this vital bridge which was rigged with explosives.

At Objective Peach, Marcone’s battalion fought off the largest Iraqi counterattack of the war. Three Iraqi brigades made up of between 5,000 and 10,000 Iraqi soldiers, backed by tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and artillery, converged and tried to retake the bridge from the Americans from three directions.

Alpha Company/11th Engineer Battalion soldiers crossed the river in small zodiac boats under fire from Iraqi fighters on the other side. Their mission was to make sure that bridge which was rigged with explosives did not blow. A river assault of this scale hadn’t been attempted since World War II.

Marcone explained just why Objective Peach was so important in an interview to PBS.

We didn’t cross the bridge at [Musaib], because we thought that’s what [the enemy] expected us to do. When we looked at the bridges — the bridge at Objective Peach, not only is it not far from Karbala, but it was close to our ultimate objective, which was Objective Lions, the Saddam International Airport. By crossing there, we were very close in striking distance, 20, 25 kilometers or so to the airport. …

Plus, it was much closer to Objective Saints, which was in the south, which was the secondary brigade’s objective. … It just proved to be not only the most unlikely bridge, if you were looking at it from the enemy’s point of view, but for us, it facilitated our follow-on missions, which was to start to encircle Baghdad from the east and the south.

Next to the fall of Baghdad, that bridge was the most important piece of terrain in the theater.

Jack Gruber (Apache 5 Megpixel) with A Company, 11th Engineers below "Peach Bridge" on the Euphrates River