What are combat photographers like?

Publications and television run pieces in which the public gets to see combat photographers from the perspective of other media professionals, but I can’t recall ever reading or seeing anything where I got to see them from military professionals’ perspectives.

So if there are any professional soldiers, sailors, and Marines on the forum who have interacted much with combat photographers and would be willing to chime in on any of the hodgepodge of questions below, I would be interested in hearing what you might have to say.

• Do you have any general impressions or stereotypes of folks in the trade?
• Do combat photographers tend to be of particular “type”, or do they tend to be pretty varied in personality?
• Do civilian combat photographers tend to be relatively knowledgeable about the practicalities of military life and about the conduct of war?
• Do combat photographers in uniform tend to share much in common with their civilian counterparts?