Kodak’s OnFilm series of interviews features cinematographer Uta Briesewitz on being hired to shoot The Wire:

One of the things that I love about my profession is that it puts me in environments and situations that I would never experience as a tourist or just a normal onlooker. I shot the pilot and the first two-and-a-half seasons of the series. The Wire explored the dark side of Baltimore where people were trapped in a vicious cycle of drug abuse and violent crime. We had situations where we’d be at a location and a S.W.A.T. team was two blocks away cleaning up a crime scene, or we would have to stop shooting for a while because there was a sniper on a roof. I used to say to myself, if I was a producer, I could have given Robert Colesberry 10 good reasons why he should not have hired a young woman from Germany to shoot a show like this. I thought how courageous it was for a producer to tell HBO that he wanted to hire this young woman, who they never heard of, to shoot this really tough show in Baltimore.

Read more: http://motion.kodak.com/motion/Publications/On_Film_Interviews/briesewitz.htm