By Rick Wilking

My wife and I were just about to open some little gifts celebrating our 36th wedding anniversary on May 20th when my cellphone rang.

I said “that’s going to be the Oklahoma call” without even seeing it was Bob Strong, North America Editor in Charge, on the other end. The presents went on hold and the packing began.

The next day I was back in Moore, Oklahoma, waiting for the weather to clear enough to fly in a Cessna 172 over the path of the storm. I say “back in Moore” because I covered the massive tornado that hit the same place in 1999 and again in 2003. The locals call the 1999 version “the May 3rd storm.” That F-5 storm killed 44 people and destroyed more than 300 homes.

Despite that devastation in 1999 it would be much worse this time. Much of the area covered by the ’99 storm was just open fields. Seeing grassy fields turned into mud with the grass torn out by the roots was eye-opening back then but this time the grassy fields were covered by new housing developments and the schools, stores and hospitals that go with it. The 2013 storm, also an F-5, killed 24, injured 377 people and destroyed 1,200 homes – four times the number of houses damaged in 1999.

With this tornado, Moore suffered its fifth massive storm in 15 years. The paths of the ’99 and ’13 storms were near-identical, even overlapping in some places. So, what is it about this place that makes it such a target? Geography. The low-pressure systems that flow down from the Rocky Mountains where I live collide with warm moist air from the gulf that form thunderstorms – huge thunderstorms, that often spawn tornadoes, lots of tornadoes, right over central Oklahoma. They don’t call it “tornado alley” for nothing.

In covering storms like these we have many ways to try to tell the story. The photo flight over the affected area is top of the list. Often it’s hard to get in on the ground right away with roads closed either by authorities or debris. Next on the list, of course, is getting in on foot, often hiking long distances to get to the hardest hit area. Photographer/EIC Adrees Latif and I split up and probed the perimeter to find a way to walk in with success on the first day. To their credit the authorities had let residents in almost immediately to try to recover what they could from their destroyed homes before more rain came in. As the sun went down people were finding photographs and jewelry and even some salvageable clothes.

It’s tricky to photograph scenes like this. You have to be very, very sensitive showing up in the front yard of someone’s destroyed home with a camera. Not everyone understands the good we do with showing the world what has happened. For one thing if you just climb over their possessions, that’s disrespectful at a minimum, even if it is all trash. Secondly, you technically trespassed to get to that spot. So I don’t shoot first and ask questions later. I introduce myself, ask permission and 99% of the time it’s granted to me. Only once did a woman not understand. She kept saying “I’ve lost enough, I’ve lost enough” and so I moved on.

Building rapport with people can lead to other things too. I was working around one of the destroyed elementary schools shooting pictures of parents trying to get their kid’s backpacks out of the school when a woman mentioned that the next day would be the last day of school with the kids from the destroyed school being sent to another location. I found out where and when, and was there the next day when 6-year-old Kaden Shippers came out with his dad. His arm was bandaged, forty stitches were in his back, staples in his head and he was wearing a t-shirt with the name of his destroyed school on the front. Bingo, I made a nice story telling picture without another competing photographer in sight.

While filing my pictures after school was let out, a woman approached her car and parked next to mine with her three kids while talking on her cellphone. “Yes, I am going to come over there with the kids. They really want to see it and I think it will bring them closure,” she was saying. My journalist radar went off again and I introduced myself. As I guessed, Tracy Stephan was talking about taking her children to see their destroyed house for the first time since the storm. And yes, she was OK with me following along carrying cameras to shoot the moment. While there I shot a picture of her three-year-old son Timmy looking for his bed. A photographer colleague described the image as “absolutely haunting.”

While cruising a neighborhood one day I came across Sarah Dick reading a Doctor Seuss book to her three-year-old daughter Jadyn in the driveway of her tornado-destroyed house – another moment you just can’t plan for. That picture was chosen as “picture of the week” by a prestigious French magazine and website. I figure since many think France is where photojournalism was born, that’s a good thing.

Next to Sarah’s house was Charles Taber’s place. Charles was keen to show me how he survived the storm in a newly built shelter nearby. It was another story-telling picture, as the shelters turned out to be a hot topic.

Another thing this place is known for – it’s the “Bible Belt.” There’s seemingly a church on every corner and these are indeed people of faith. Over and over I heard “God will take care of us, he will provide.” In the ’99 storm a destroyed church held services in a tent in the parking lot praising God and looking forward. And was the same today.

And so it went, one thing leading to another. Covering the storms wasn’t all that different once on the ground, but I did add an element to my own photography.

I flew a small radio controlled quad-copter with a camera slung underneath to get some low-level aerial photos. These were very different from the images I got the first day from the airplane restricted to fly at 3,500 feet or above. Some of the copter images were only 40 feet off the ground; just enough to give a different view and to tell the story yet another way.

In the summer of 2011, as a chapter in a broader two-year project on obesity in America, I started a photo story on an almost 300 pound teenager who was planning bariatric surgery as a last resort to lose weight.

When a photojournalist starts a project like this there is always a lot of doubt. How much time will it take? Over how long a period and with how many visits. Will the subjects (and their friends and families) get tired of having me around? Will they cooperate in giving me the access I need? Since it’s a medical story will the hospital and doctors involved cooperate too? And most importantly will the time investment from both my subjects and me produce quality images that convey a compelling story?

SLIDESHOW: JAZMINE’S TRANSFORMATION

After bariatric surgeon Dr. Michael Snyder told me he had a candidate for the project I was introduced to Jazmine Raygoza. Just 17-years-old at the time she was preparing to have a lap-band placed, a highly controversial procedure for a teenager.

I first met her at the psychiatric evaluation young bariatric patients go through and was surprised to learn at that meeting her mother Veronica had just had gastric bypass surgery two months earlier. Now I had an even more interesting story to tell than I planned on.

Last week I shot what will probably be my last picture of the two. Fifteen months after starting the story mom Veronica has lost 73 pounds and daughter Jazmine has lost 87. I myself lost 30 pounds (with no surgery,) just because when I thought of making my normal McDonald’s run I remembered the brave Raygoza women and got a salad somewhere instead.

But this story was about much more than numbers on a scale. It was about how bariatric surgery, while very helpful for many people, is no quick fix.

While it’s hard enough for an adult to handle, Jazmine had to get through her last year of high school while adapting to the changes. She started a fitness club at school to get some built-in positive peer pressure.

At prom she was still heavier than most of her classmates but had a lot more confidence than the year before and at her graduation she looked a lot more like the rest of the kids crossing the stage.

One of the downsides was when she lost weight too fast (common in the procedure) she started developing kidney stones and had to have her gall bladder removed as a result. Eating tiny portions of food, forcing herself to go to the gym regularly and enduring some jealous (now former) friends along the way wasn’t easy to take either.

Jazmine’s goal is to lose about another 20 pounds and it seems this may be the toughest – excess skin that hangs off her now. So even though I won’t be documenting it she still has plenty of changes to go through.

The reality is, if she wants to stay trim, she will probably need to eat those tiny portions of food for the rest of her life, hence the controversy in teens getting the procedure. Many professionals believe that such a decision with life-long consequences can’t be properly made by someone so young.

But for now Jazmine and her mother are both enjoying a new “joie de vivre” and have no regrets. They have more energy, are healthier, have more self-esteem and self-confidence and they both say they really like being able to stay on high heels all night!

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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.

After the early chapters in 2010 on “fat acceptance” and on an obese woman getting a gastric bypass, I’ve done work on:

-       Local hospitals fighting youth obesity

-       Morbidly obese people auditioning for The Biggest Loser TV show

-       The Biggest Loser Boot Camp in Utah

-       A clinical study on infants born from obese mothers

-       How schools are working with very young and obese children to eat better and exercise

-       A teenager having a controversial lap band procedure and her mother who had gastric bypass at nearly the same time

-       And most recently, free Zumba classes for low-income people

What I have learned along the way is there is no easy fix. Simply telling people to eat less and exercise more is not the solution in and of itself. There can be complex genetics involved, psychiatric implications and much more to address.

Then there are the societal influences like the “super sizing” of fast food offerings. There are the “food deserts” in the inner city where supermarkets selling healthy food are completely absent. Convenience stores selling cheap hot dogs and chips are the sources for dinner for many. And there are traditions like bringing giant cakes to school for parties celebrating every kid’s birthday.

Possibly the most rewarding work has come in covering Jazmine Raygoza and her mother Veronica who both had bariatric surgery. I’ve been covering them consistently from the days before Jazmine’s surgery, through her procedure, and post-surgery life with gym workouts, learning exercises with other bariatric patients and just hanging out with friends watching her get thinner. Since she is in her last year of high school I’ve shot her at prom, her graduation. I will be shooting the final set of pictures at her one year mark on June 20, 2012. By then, between Jazmine and her mother, they will have lost nearly 200 pounds. That’s a lot of weight they won’t be carrying around anymore – hopefully forever.

As for me, I did well in the gym and lost 20 pounds myself. But don’t look to see me in a photo documentary any time soon!

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.

And this is a big part of all the hoopla surrounding him. At a time when Americans are more polarized on almost every topic the “I love (or hate) Tim Tebow” yelling is at a fever pitch. “Religion in sports? – no way!”, many say. Except the Tebow fans who say “about time!”

Covering the Broncos since Tebow arrived has added another dimension. With any team that has a standout player you have to have good coverage of him no matter what the team is doing; he will be in the news win or lose. So you keep one eye on him while trying to watch everything else going on. Imagine picture-in-picture on your TV only it’s you doing it not your TV. Don’t try it at home.

When Tim comes down to the endzone to pray before a game he is surrounded by still photographers and TV cameras to get the famous “Tebowing” shot. The “Tebowing” has started to spread – earlier this month when I was in the Colorado mountains covering World Cup ski racing the winner of the women’s Super G event, American Lindsey Vonn, struck the same pose before climbing the podium – in her ski boots.

Shooting from the sidelines since Tebow has started with the team means more photographers than ever. Media outlets that normally might send only one photographer are sending two or three now just to be sure to have every Tebow angle covered. If this team makes the playoffs I can only imagine the sideline chaos.
Still the fans in Denver are loving it. Even non-religious types are on board to the thrill of “the kid” succeeding which, after all, is one of the oldest themes in sport. Tebow has just had two losses this season since starting. With three games to go in the regular season people all over will be watching to see how the story ends.

Until next year when it will all start up again – as long as Tim Tebow’s name is still on the roster.

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!”

Of course you never say that to a perfect stranger.  But your questions remain.

In covering the broad topic of obesity in America over the last two years I have made an effort to have our readers get to know obese people as just people. To learn about them, who they are really, and get past just their size.  I’ve asked my subjects the questions you have been thinking about, and been with them at home, at work and out in public.

Newsflash:  They are just like anyone else even if they don’t fit into the “healthy” category on a BMI (Body Mass Index) chart.

Ranging from people aligned with the fat acceptance movement (that subject was a nearly 500 pound girl who thought her size was just right) to those who signed up for a “Biggest Loser” camp where they only eat 400 calories a meal and work out 5 times a day to those who chose surgery as a last resort, they have all been a joy to meet.

A teenager and her mother who both recently underwent bariatric surgery are my most recent subjects.  Jazmine Raygoza is 17 with one year of high school left.  She just had Lap-Band surgery to restrict the size of her stomach in a last ditch attempt to lose weight. Her mother Veronica has already lost 35 pounds after she had a gastric bypass two months ago.  The mother and daughter hope they can help each other along in the journey to lose almost 200 pounds between them.

Bariatric surgery on teens and youths is a controversial topic in the medical world. The surgeon who worked with me on this latest story, Dr. Michael Snyder is one of the very few who will even consent to perform the operation on such a young patient in the Rocky Mountain region.  He has done less than 3 dozen patients under 21 as opposed to thousands of adults.

Snyder says commitment is one factor that makes the difference. First he has the young patients go though nutrition, behavioral and exercise counseling and a psychological evaluation.

Only about 50% of those who start Snyder’s teen program have actually had the surgery. He compares it to marriage. He can perform the surgery in about 15 minutes but then the young patient has to live with it.

Still for many it can be worth it.  A clinical trial, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in February of 2010, showed 24 surgery patients losing an average 76.3 pounds, nearly 28% of their total body weight. The equivalent for the diet-and-exercise group of 18 people was 6.6 pounds, or 3% of body weight.

But questions remain. Ongoing studies are still trying to determine long-term metabolic, nutritional and psychological effects of the surgery in adolescents.

All of that doesn’t concern Jazmine.  She still tears up as she recalls her classmates calling her “earthquake” or “cow” at elementary school.   She still has horrible memories of being afraid she would get stuck in her desk in middle school. And she fears diabetes,  as she has a family history of the disease.

Both Jazmine and her mother Veronica felt the surgical solution was all they had left.  Before choosing surgery, they joined a gym together and worked out most every day for a year. Veronica lost some weight but Jazmine lost almost none which made her even more discouraged on weigh-in days.

So their new life-long chapter begins.  I’ll be checking in with them to get new photos as the weight comes off.  And I can’t wait to be there when Jazmine starts senior year at high school and see the reaction of her classmates.

Slideshow: Jazmine Raygoza decides to undergo surgery to reduce her weight.

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.

Elsie opens the bar at 9am for breakfast and delivers last call around 10pm, or earlier if the place is empty. When she’s not in the bar she drives to see her neighbors or her children in her car sporting the “Monowi 1” license plate.

If you look at an online map you will see all the town’s streets displayed. There’s Louisa, Butte, Broad, Brule, Marion and Paulina Streets shown; all appearing as if they are really still there.

But when you get to Monowi you see that mostly all that’s left for roads are grassy paths that look more like clearings in a wood than streets.

The town stop sign hasn’t been needed in many years on Louisa Street where all that’s left are three crumbling buildings. Some of the other streets have nothing to show people were ever there.

Elsie showed me photos of the town in its prime back in the 1930’s when there were some 150 people living there. Established around 1900 there once was a two-story high school (since torn down), two grain elevators (one remains, that her husband used to run) and a one room elementary school where Elsie went to school for 8 years long, long ago. The school is still standing alone on a hill waiting for children that haven’t come there for decades.

If you want to check out a book at the famous town library you ask Elsie for the key to the building then walk the 50 feet next door, let yourself in and pick what you would like to read. Just write your name down on the pad by the library door before you lock it back up.

I wanted to get a feel for Monowi before concentrating on photographing Elsie so I went to the town early in the morning the day after I arrived.

Wandering the paths and peeking into the crumbling buildings was fascinating and sobering at the same time. This would be a ghost town except for the one living (and elderly) soul left but signs of a vibrant past life were everywhere.

The last event at the town church was the funeral for Elsie’s father over 50 years ago. That once tidy little building is now dying itself. Bugs and animals are now the only occupants that come in the open front door, or through the hole in the roof.

In a yard is a lawnmower abandoned in the middle of a lawn with the grass growing over it as if to show victory over the long-dead machine.

There was a pair of moth-eaten overalls that a farmer hung up on the wall in his house a half century ago never to be worn again.

There was a homemade basketball ring with a slowly rotting net.

There was a house decaying from the outside in, holes in the roof letting in the pouring rain and the driving snow. The floor was collapsed and the walls were folding over on themselves like a book being closed.

Elsie has been asked a million times why she stays and the answer is simple – she likes it here. She has a wide network of many, many old friends in the area who she gets to see every day. Each winter she visits her family in sunny Tucson, Arizona but after a few weeks gets anxious to get back to the little town where she grew up.

When Elsie finally can’t take care of herself anymore she is resigned to the fact that she too will have to close the book on Monowi. In the meantime, stop by and join tourists from around the world that still come into the tavern for a bite to eat and a brew.

Because it’s true what they say – the Monowi Tavern has the coldest beer in town.

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…

The statistics on obesity in the U.S. are astounding – government sources say that in 2009 no U.S. state met the Healthy People 2010 obesity target of 15%. Even in my state of Colorado, which is often the leanest in the nation, over 18% of the population is classified as obese. Mississippi has over 34%. Only Colorado and the District of Columbia have less than 20% and nine states have populations that are over 30% obese. And it’s getting worse.

I have always felt the best way to report on a topic like this is by using individual’s personal stories to illustrate it. I broke it down into sub-topics like childhood obesity, diet and exercise, the “Biggest Loser” TV show phenomenon, bariatric surgery and more. Within each I found people that were willing to let me tell their stories and by doing so, illustrate the overall topic.

One of the first people I met in my research was Gabi Jones (not her real name.) Gabi weighs around 500 pounds and is quite happy at that weight. She is an advocate of fat acceptance saying that being heavy doesn’t always mean being unhealthy. She was a great subject to work with, very open to me shooting different aspects of her life, from swimming to nude modeling and getting body painted. Just when you think you’ve seen everything…

Gabi told me about the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA). The NAAFA public relations director Peggy Howell, in an email reply back in April said “maybe you can do something about the headless fatties the media seems to enjoy plastering all over television and newsprint. How about if photographers stop being lazy and get permission to use people’s full images and show them as real people as opposed to disembodied bellies and asses walking down the street? It sure makes it easier to hate someone when you can’t see their face or look them in the eyes, doesn’t it? Any help you can offer fat people in this regard would be greatly appreciated!”

Then Howell turned down my request to cover the NAAFA annual convention. Regarding members of the organization, she said “The thought of seeing their image in a newspaper, magazine or on screen can be very disconcerting to some people.” She was also worried about the images being sold, to a weight loss company for instance, something Reuters would never do. Bottom line, my access was denied.

After generating the idea for an enterprise story, access to subjects is the next toughest nut to crack. These days almost everyone is suspicious of the media. Even well-respected and well known media outlets like Reuters can get people’s radar howling when we ask for access. Add to that the medical aspect of the story and the privacy laws in America and its tough to work a topic like this.

But, with persistence I found some great people that understood the value in what I was trying to do. Meetings with hospital public relations and marketing departments, doctors, researchers, surgeons and many others dragged on for months but eventually it all came together. I’d like to thank in particular the PR/marketing departments of The Children’s Hospital and Rose Medical Center, both in the Denver area for their tremendous help on the story.

I never would have expected that I would get permission to be in a hospital operating room fully gowned and shooting from behind a surgical mask. If you haven’t seen a woman’s belly inflated like a beach ball with 5 holes in it as surgeons work their magic with 2 foot long instruments performing a gastric bypass, you will in this story.

Now that I’ve finished the project, I see the world in a different light – I could literally be covering this topic forever. I now notice obese people wheeling around in the supermarkets more and more on the now-common electric carts the stores provide. At the checkout every magazine has a headline that reads something like “Drop 10 pounds this month!”

Determined not to look like some of my subjects, I joined a fitness club and now might even read that cover story on how to drop the 10 pounds.

I’ll be following up with some of my subjects to add some “after” pictures to the file. Carolyn Dawson, the bariatric surgery patient, hoping to lose 150 pounds, is set for cosmetic surgery to remove the excess skin sometime next year and I’ve been granted access by the surgeons and patient to shoot it.

Now that should make some interesting enterprise photography. Or not.

View the large format photo story here.

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.

It developed into a crime story with gangs of looters and hoodlums in charge and almost no police presence – all the hallmarks of Haiti during its wilder times.

Witnessing floating bodies in New Orleans struck me in the same way as seeing bodies discovered daily on the Port-au-Prince streets.

When the National Guard showed up to take control and help refugees stranded at the Convention Center, it was a scene that reminded me of covering U.S. peacekeeping troops in Bosnia as the war wound down.

But it was all in one place – a major U.S. city – where this kind of thing was unheard of.

There are many images from the disaster that will remain with me forever. The most horrific was watching an elderly woman slowly die before my eyes. She sat in a wheelchair, still in a hospital gown, surrounded by the mob still waiting to be evacuated downtown almost two weeks after the storm hit.

Miss Dorothy they called her but no one could say where she came from or how she got there.

Before she passed away a man carrying a baby shouted for my attention. He whisked an old dirty blanket off another elderly person, this one a man slumped over and dead in a lawn chair in the middle of the street.

It was nearly incomprehensible. But, it was important to be there and show that scene to the world. Shortly after these images were published and seen by the world, National Guard troops showed up with water and evacuations began.

I’ve been back to the Gulf only once since then and that was to cover the BP oil spill. Signs of the storm are still everywhere, boarded up buildings, the smell of mold and vacant lots with only a set of stairs remaining to show where a building once stood.

The area may physically recover someday but the emotional scars will be permanent. No one will ever forget the terrible loss caused by a hurricane named Katrina.

DENVER (Reuters Life!) – Zachary had always been a big child but when he turned 10, his weight started to rise rapidly and he stopped going outside to play.

His parents, who had thought Zachary would “grow into his weight,” become concerned as their son seemed to lose his zest for life and any interest in taking part in anything active.

This led his mother, Leslie Frantzen, to sign Zachary up to a 10-week weight program at The Children’s Hospital in Denver called the Shapedown Program which teaches not just the child but also the parents about nutrition, the emotional side of eating — and that exercise can be fun.

“Like many families, we have had our share of struggles and trials in life. Zachary has always been our “sensitive” child. He internalized these life challenges more than we realized,” Leslie Frantzen told Reuters.

“I always knew that I turned to food to “self-medicate” but I had no idea that children do that, too … Shapedown has helped us, as parents, know how to validate Zach’s feelings and how to help him understand them and work through them.”

Since signing onto the program in March, Zachary has lost about six pounds, trimming down from 134 pounds, and seen a 6.4 percent decrease in his body mass index (BMI) which measures body fatness based on a person’s weight and height.

“More importantly, Zach’s moods have improved dramatically. He smiles more! He is motivated and excited about life again. He helps our family remember what is healthy,” said Frantzen.

Zachary is one of about 200 children referred by their pediatrician every year to attend the Shapedown Program which has a non-diet approach to weight management.

The program aims to teach families how to make healthier food choices as part of a drive against rising obesity rates in the United States, a cause taken up by First Lady Michelle Obama.

The program also includes two years of individual follow-up after the course to reinforce the changes a family makes to its lifestyle.

FAT CHILDREN MORE LIKELY TO BE OBESE ADULTS

Marilyn Day, who runs the Shapedown Program at the hospital, said this program was different because it involved the whole family and addressed issues like self-esteem.

“The concerns are for a child’s emotional health, such as weight-teasing and discrimination, and for physical health, including high blood pressure, high blood fats, pre-diabetes, difficulty breathing during sleep, orthopedic problems, and many other medical issues,” Day told Reuters.

Obesity is one of the biggest health challenges facing the United States with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimating 15 percent of American children are obese or overweight. In some states this figure is above 30 percent.

Obese children are more likely to be saddled with risk factors associated with heart disease and type 2 diabetes and they are much more likely to be obese as adults.

The Garcia-Villanueva family were referred to Shapedown when their six-year-old daughter Fernanda developed a snoring problem that the doctor believed was due to being overweight.

Fernanda has since lost weight and it has changed her attitude and that of her family who has given up Internet access as a way to cut back on screen time.

“Fernanda is more confident and now takes more pride in her appearance. She wants to be active and go outside to play and exercise,” said her mother Areli Villanueva.

“She loves swimming and dancing. Before … she was content to sit and watch movies all day.”

Fernanda’s mother said it was key that the whole family was involved to help her daughter get her weight under control.

“Working together as a family makes a big difference,” she told Reuters.

(Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)

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!

Here’s my favorite still image from the 50 some pictures that went into the video project and the two long days I spent with the Jeub family. The action of three-year-old Havilah seemingly floating around on the trampoline, the light, the way her dress twirled up – all combine to tell a story. If only her sister hadn’t appeared dressed in red in the background of the picture it would have been perfect. I guess you just can’t have it all!