It takes more than talent to be a successful news photographer, Eve Edelheit says.
BY ZACHARY GIPSON-KENDRICK
NNB Student Journalist
February in Plant City typically marks the start of 11 days filled with festivities, music and the crowning of a strawberry queen.
This year Tampa Bay Times photojournalist Eve Edelheit, 26, and reporter Anna M. Phillips took a less-than-traditional approach to the annual celebration.
They went behind the scenes in Plant City to share the story of local Hispanic migrant workers, more specifically a 20-year-old woman named Maria Zuñiga and her family.
“They don’t acknowledge the Hispanic migrant community in Plant City,” said Edelheit. The project, which they loosely titled “The Real Strawberry Queen,” takes “an intimate look at a female migrant worker’s story,” she said.
The months-long project was pitched to editors as a new angle on a previous project on Strawberry Festival queens, the young white women who have served as local royalty every year since the festival began in 1930.
“It was something we took interest in,” said Edelheit, “You have to be able to get people on board to give you the time.”
“A lot of people think all it takes to be a photographer is talent,” she said. “Your talent can only take you so far. After that it’s hard work and persistence.”
In high school, a photography teacher told her she had a special eye for the craft, Edelheit said, and soon she was taking steps towards a promising career. “I, in high school, really struggled with feeling smart because of my ADD (attention deficit disorder),” she said. “I didn’t realize that ADD actually is often a sign that you’re really creative and think about things differently.”
“With me and photography, I think it really taught me how to not focus on just the thing happening in front of me,” she said. “Just having that ability to be distracted by things around you and, you know, notice the different things that are happening, I think is really important.”
Edelheit graduated with a photojournalism degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 2011 and had internships with four newspapers around the country before landing a full-time job with the Times in December 2013.
“I think you have to be really passionate about (photojournalism),” she said. “You really have to care about your community and what you’re doing, and how you can serve the community through your work.”
Supervisors encourage her to pace herself between assignments and projects, Edelheit said. “I think the people that are most successful in the newsroom are the people that go beyond the daily work, who make their own assignments and who take the initiative to enterprise.”
Asked about how she approaches a potential subject for a story, she quotes Times colleague Lane DeGregory, a Pulitzer Prize winning newsfeatures reporter: “When you’re first meeting a subject, you put your toe in the door, and then your foot in the door, and then you put your knee in the door, and just kind of slowly gain that access.”
Edelheit said it’s important to make a photographic subject feel comfortable with a camera close by. “Often I’m not even shooting, really, at the beginning,” she said. “I’m just making people feel comfortable with me, and also letting them know who I am, showing them photos of my life… You have to give a part of yourself in order to have a relationship.”
Her philosophy seems to work. Her photos of people seem to capture an intimacy that could only be possible after establishing certain levels of comfort. “There really is a trust that has to happen if you want your projects to be successful, and then they’ll give you access to their lives,” Edelheit said.
“Sometimes we forget that journalists are human beings, too, and ultimately most of the time, especially on more intimate pieces, we want the best for our subjects.”
See Eve Edelheit and Anna M. Phillips’ report on a young Hispanic migrant worker in the strawberry fields of eastern Hillsborough County at:
http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/dreams-of-nursing-are-on-hold-as-strawberry-picker-remains-in-the-fields/2222292