New York Times
Picture Editor
Has Style

After more than 25 years as a deadline-battling New York Times picture editor, Tiina Loite, BA’79 (R), says she still gets a “big charge” out of obtaining knockout photos that jump off the page with unforgettable power.

What kinds of photo challenge does she enjoy most? Ones like her fierce struggle to arrange a portrait of media mogul Ted Turner for the front page of a special Times section on philanthropy.

“First he said yes, then he said no … then one of his aides called us back and said yes again,” groans Loite, who’s been assigning and editing photos for the Times’ Sunday Style section since 1992. “Turner was very polite and friendly, but he also kept changing his mind. Still, I wanted that picture badly, and I was determined to get it.”

The struggle for Turner’s photograph took place in 1995, after the celebrity mogul decided to give a billion dollars to charity. Turner had been inspired by an elderly African-American washerwoman, the late Oseola McCarty, who’d saved $150,000 from her miniscule wages over the course of a lifetime and donated the money to a local college scholarship fund.

“The picture I wanted — the really great picture — was a shot of the two of them together,” recalls Loite. “But Turner’s people kept changing their minds and calling us back, until I wanted to scream.” Then, at the very last minute, they agreed to a quick photo shoot at the CNN Building in Atlanta.

Despite the constraints, Loite proceeded with the arrangements for the photograph. “I don’t know how to explain it,” she recalls with a laugh, “but I always seem to do a little better under conditions of maximum stress. Sometimes I think best when I’m in the middle of a disaster!”

Loite came up with a winning strategy. “I sent my husband [veteran Times photographer Fred Conrad] to Atlanta. At the same time, my staff and I started putting together a backup cover that we could use if Turner changed his mind again. But he showed up right on time, and Fred finally managed to get the photo we wanted so badly.

“Fred sent the film straight to the airport. Our deadline was at 6 p.m. that same day, and we barely made it. We were all completely drained, but we’d gotten the image we were after!”

Loite’s artistic abilities mirror those of her parents, who immigrated to the United States from Estonia. Her father was a noted architect and her “wonderfully creative” mother designed textiles. Born in New York City and raised in Fort Lee, N.J., Loite arrived on FDU’s Rutherford Campus in 1975. Drawn to journalism, she soon took on the job of arts editor at the campus newspaper, The Spectator, where she reviewed films in an office full of “pizza crusts, empty Coke cans and ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts.

“That was a wonderfully exciting time for all of us,” she recalls with a smile of nostalgia. “We worked hard to get the paper out — but then we’d often jump in somebody’s car and make a late-night run to Chinatown!”

After graduation, Loite won a coveted spot in a master’s program at Stanford University in California, where she made several contacts that helped her land an entry-level job in the Times newsroom. “Right from day one, I seemed to have a knack for selecting and displaying photos,” she recalls. “Photo-editing is all about developing your visual skills — your ability to recognize a good picture when you see it — and I think I was fortunate because both of my parents were artists.”

Loite settled into her current post as photo chief of Style a dozen years ago and proceeded to wow readers all across the Big Apple with the splashy, trendy packages she designed for her section. She and Fred were married in 1988, and together they are raising daughters Annika, 15, and Romy, 12, in suburban Bergen County, N.J.

So what’s the key to assembling powerful photo images for the Times? Says Loite: “I do think you need a gift for visual imagery, but beyond that, it’s mostly a matter of refusing to give up until you get the great photo. Just recently, we were doing a feature on wacky ice cream flavors, and the ice cream kept melting and dribbling on us. But we wanted the perfect image, so we just kept on going.

“It took us two full days of work, but in the end, we got a terrific photo. That ice cream picture looked so good it made you want to take a bite!”

— T.N.

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