Watching the war in Iraq unfold, I’m struck by the difference in news coverage between this battle and previous conflicts.

íany journalists are embedded with military units, traveling with them and providing readers and viewers an eyewitness battlefield perspective. Satellite communications now allow nearly instantaneous news coverage from around the world.

What does the availability of these technological tools mean to a photographer in the field and his editor at the newspaper?

Boston Herald photographer Kuni Takahashi was in Baghdad April 9 and captured compelling photos of the toppling of the giant statue of Saddam Hussein.

His pictures were back at the Herald the same day. I viewed them on the Herald’s Web site April 10 and called Jim Mahoney, the daily’s director of photography, to discuss how the photos were captured and transmitted so quickly.

Right gear needed

For one thing, the reporters and photographers need the right gear. Takahashi went to Iraq with three Nikon D1H camera bodies, an Apple iBook, a Hewlett-Packard laptop and a Motorola Iridium 9500 satellite phone.

The original plan was to use the phone to send the photos to Boston via the Internet, but “that would have taken 20 minutes to transmit a picture,” said Mahoney.

Instead, Takahashi used a regional broadband global area network satellite modem, or RBGAN. This device connects to a laptop via Ethernet, USB or Bluetooth wireless connection and can transmit a 750-kilobyte file in three minutes.

That’s fast enough to allow Takahashi to send not just a couple of photos, but a normal day’s average of about a dozen, and sometimes as many as 20. “He gives us what he has. I feel no constraints [from the technology]” said Mahoney.

Great access

Takahashi was embedded with a Marine Corps unit at the beginning of the war.

“The access that Kuni had to soldiers was phenomenal, it shocked me. It was thrilling to see that kind of access,” said Mahoney. “The quality of the images was great.”

The technical quality of the images transmitted was also good. The Herald was able to print them at as large as 14-by-18 inches with excellent results, Mahoney said.

In the first week of the war, Takahashi was unable to file his photos for four days because of concern that the signal generated by the RBGAN transmission might provide a target for enemy fire. Since then, he has been allowed to transmit daily, although he must confine his satellite uplinking to daylight hours. It was feared nighttime transmission would enable the Iraqis to home in on the signal, thus endangering coalition forces.

After a week, Takahashi left his embedded status and became a unilateral journalist, traveling with a caravan of other unilateral photographers and journalists in a convoy that moves with the U.S. military.

Lost to sand

As one might expect, one of Takahashi’s continuing challenges is to maintain his equipment. Phones, cameras and computers run on batteries. The recharger is connected to a car battery as needed. But there is some wear and tear.

Mahoney said Takahashi was down to one working camera body in early April, having lost one to “the elements, probably sand damage” and another that was run over by a vehicle.

Mahoney hopes the last camera remains functional so that he doesn’t have to figure a way to get a replacement to Baghdad.

While we spoke with Mahoney, he was interrupted by a call from Kuni in Baghdad. When he got back on the phone, Mahoney laughed and said, “He got mad at me for how I cropped his photos.”

Some things never change.

Tom Arnold is a partner of Summit Media Partners LLC, a management consulting firm serving media companies. He has worked with newspapers across America in the areas of process improvement, cross-functional teams, activity based costing, cost of quality, operational measurements and computer systems. Send comments and queries to tarnold@smpllc.com or visit www.summitmediapartners.com.