By Rick Wilking

Almost 2 years ago I started work on a photo documentary simply titled “Obesity in America.”  It’s a simple title but with complex subject matter.

Getting the access, the various permissions from individuals and institutions and working through the convoluted American HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) that protects patient privacy to extremes was quite a challenge. But trying to tell a story with this many layers and permutations was even tougher.

It was a hot topic back in 2010 when I started, with obesity-related stories moving frequently on the Reuters wire but with few images to go with them. I set out to change that and decided to work the project in multiple chapters.

Since I last blogged about the documentary, I have shot several more chapters and learned a lot more about how complicated this topic is.

By Rick Wilking

Do a Google search on this new celebrity and there are 299,000,000 results. Brad Pitt? No, he only has 187 million. I’m talking about the newest phenom in the world of sports – Tim Tebow.

Being a Denver-based photographer where Tebow plays starting quarterback for the Broncos has kept me in the vortex of the Tebow storm. Going back to his first start late last season and then training camp in August, we’ve been focusing on his young career. Would he start this year or would he not was the hot topic back in late summer. Kyle Orton was eventually chosen as starter but when the team went 1–4 Tebow got the nod and Orton was out. Then the fun really began.

Tebow was a superstar in college at the University of Florida (first sophomore to win the Heisman Trophy, won not one but two NCAA National Football Championships) but how would he do in the big leagues? He was a first round draft pick in the NFL meaning many had high hopes for him to succeed. But the NFL game is so much different than college there’s no guarantee a player will repeat. Scrambling around on the field can only go so far in the NFL before getting tackled repeatedly by much bigger and faster players will destroy you. Being a rookie in the league with a great pedigree means extra attention to start with but then add this element: religion. I don’t think a sports writer out there can remember any athlete starting most press conferences with “First and foremost I have to thank my lord and savior, Jesus Christ.”

Growing up the son of active Christian missionaries Tebow has always been devout, and very public about it. Now that he’s on the biggest stage in American sports he’s not about to clam up. In fact he has said he uses the attention to spread his beliefs whenever he can.

Obesity.

Just the word is ugly. Morbid obesity sounds even worse, the clinical term for someone with a body mass index of 40 or higher. Morbidly obese usually means someone is at least 100 pounds over their suggested normal weight.

With all the media attention on the topic the word obesity by itself might conjure up images of giant sized people waddling down the sidewalk, pulling into a handicapped parking spot or riding electric carts that have popped up at almost any major store. You might pray you don’t get seated next to “one of them” on a train or an airplane.

The media inevitably run video or photos of giant people shot from behind to go with the latest story on obesity.  Is it because they are protecting the person’s privacy or is it just to emphasize how big they are?

You might be thinking “Wow, there goes another one, glad it’s not me.”  “What in the world does that person eat to get that big?”  “Why don’t they just go to the gym?”  “Such a shame for someone so young, good looking too, if he/she lost about 100 pounds they would look great!”

The population sign outside the town reads “1.” The one refers to Elsie Eiler, 77.

That makes Monowi, Nebraska the smallest incorporated town in America.

I was assigned to go there recently and produce a photo story to go with text that had been written much earlier. With this place really in the middle of nowhere it was problematic to send a photographer just to shoot this one person.

But when my editor saw that it was “only” a four hour drive from Omaha where I would be going to cover Warren Buffett and the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, the decision was made for me to make the trip to see Elsie.

The first shock when landing in this off the beaten track kind of place was the lodging. The nearest hotel (30 minutes from Monowi) was really a small motel, kind of like the Bates Motel in the movie “Psycho.” And yes I stayed in the room next to the lobby. I made sure there weren’t any peepholes.

When I first met Elsie Eiler the night I arrived she was serving up burgers and beer to her friends and neighbors, all patrons at the Monowi Tavern which she runs. Her sign behind the bar reads “coldest beer in town” which of course it is since it’s the only beer in town. For that matter it’s the only business.

An 8-month look at obesity in America

Reuters photojournalists work in many different scenarios. You could be working in a 2’ x 2’ assigned space on the red carpet at the Academy Awards with 1,000 other photographers – we call that a set piece event. If you’re on the sidelines of the NFL Super Bowl or the camera platform at the U.S. presidential inauguration you’re on a set piece event.

Another day you might be covering spot news, shooting a hurricane or tornado, a school shooting or a tragedy like the space shuttle crash.

Then, there’s enterprise work which can be the most difficult of all. From the story idea, to getting cooperative subjects and access, to the shooting itself: enterprise journalism is all up to you and using your imagination and creativity. My recently completed project on obesity in America was such a piece.

Last spring I started looking for an enterprise topic to shoot during the year. I considered covering the economy but we had endless images of unemployment lines, foreclosures, job fairs and poor people devastated by the financial collapse. Frankly, I couldn’t see the need for doing more.

Soon I realized there was another topic that was in nearly every newspaper, magazine and website that we didn’t have much imagery of. “The Epidemic of Obesity” – a term bandied about in the media and vilified by the fat acceptance crowd.

You haven’t heard of fat acceptance? I hadn’t either. More on that later…

While covering Hurricane Katrina ripping through New Orleans five years ago, it struck me how the individual events that unfolded in the aftermath echoed similar tragedies I had photographed around the globe.

It was like several stories in one – a hurricane of course, but there was little typical hurricane damage in the city. In fact, before the levees broke and it turned into a flood story I was close to leaving to move further east along the coast to cover the near-total devastation in Mississippi.

It was a huge human tragedy story, reminiscent of 9/11 in New York in some ways with dazed, confused and distraught people wandering the streets.

Rick Wilking is a Reuters contract photojournalist based in Denver, Colorado who has been shooting for Reuters for almost 25 years based in Europe, Washington, D.C. and now in Colorado. Rick recently developed the idea of spending time documenting the lives of a Christian “Quiverfull” family who have 15 children due to their belief that all family planning is best left in the hands of God. Rick produced the following piece of multimedia video from his time spent with the Jeub family in Colorado and tells us about the experience below. -  Jim Bourg

I am convinced that the easiest part of my job is taking pictures. Coming up with story ideas, getting access and then producing the final results are MUCH tougher! That was very true with this story. I read about Christian Quiverfull-minded folks who closely follow and live by Christian scripture and biblical verses and decided to try to find one of these families to document. I begged my way into a Quiverfull forum on the web and was met there with much skepticism about letting me in. One family in Kansas said maybe and another back east said I could come by. But neither were enthused and I knew the travel budget was too tight for a trip that distant and long.Then I found the Jeub family, only a 90 minute drive away from my home in Colorado. They too were tentative at first but let me in after seeing stories I had done recently in their area. My work documenting the headquarters of the “Focus on the Family” organization, portraying troops returning from Iraq at a nearby military base and covering “The Purity Ball”, a Christian father-daughter event all convinced them of my fairness and the integrity of my photojournalism. They said they prayed on it hard and were led to let me into their home to tell their story through pictures and sound.Quiverfull, like any other belief system or philosophy, takes different forms. Believers generally view children as a gift from God and avoid all forms of birth control. To many, including the Jeubs, the movement means trusting God entirely to decide your family size by surrendering your life to God. The Jeubs say that goes for their reproductive life too. “Wendy and I believe God wants us to trust Him in our family planning. The results are his to deal out. We’re more than fine by that. We are amazed (italics theirs) at how incredible the blessings have been…..We have 15 children, but why would we say that #16 wasn’t a blessing? Or #17? Or #18?”Once I met the Jeubs it was really just about being a fly on the wall witnessing what goes on normally in their lives and their home. Chris told the attendees during a church service held in their home that one of the best things about a photographer is that they are invisible. He then proceeded to introduce me.Producing the video after the fact took almost as much time as shooting the pictures and video did. I think it is worth it though because the power of the images is just enhanced with motion, music and narration by the people involved. This old dog just decided to learn some new tricks and record audio and embrace video technology in addition to shooting still photos late last year. I’ve been working for Reuters for almost 25 years but this is my first video project.

For photographers the saying used to be that you can’t go wrong with kids or dogs. The Jeubs had recently lost the family dog but kids they had in abundance. Thirteen kids are living at home; six are under the age of 6, there’s a set of twins, a 4 month old baby and a 17-year-old celebrating her birthday. We in the business say this is a “target-rich environment” for making photos. Everywhere you looked there was something happening. The trick was to pick and choose the moments to focus on, the same as with any other story. It’s the little fleeting moments that make the best pictures, every time. Seeing them when others don’t and then capturing them in a creative way is the secret to success as a documentary photographer.

Thanks to the Jeub family: Zechariah, Priscilla, Havilah, Joshua, Josiah, Hannah, Keilah, Tabitha, Noah, Micah, Isaiah, Lydia, Cynthia, father Chris and mother Wendy for letting me into their life briefly and ignoring me as much as possible while I was there!