The Photographer
Elena Crouch
Senior, Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School
Elena Crouch is already a seasoned traveler, visiting her mother’s native Sicily each summer to see relatives and practice her Italian. Yet she doesn’t feel the need to traverse the globe to discover the exotic: She finds it in her own backyard.
Armed with a macro-lensed camera, Elena captures a falling raindrop, a fluttering insect, a trembling leaf, and turns the images into art.
“Anyone can take a picture of a pretty place,” the Bethesda-Chevy Chase senior says. “It takes a special eye to find the hidden beauty around you.”
Nature photography is a long-term interest for the 17-year-old Chevy Chase resident. Her dream job is to care for marine mammals and use photography to document the degradation of their habitat. “I want to do something for the environmental protection of the ocean,” she says.
To that end, she’s active in her school’s environmental club, working with the Audubon Naturalist Society to clean up local streams. On a trip to Italy last summer, she helped rehabilitate injured sea turtles with the World Wildlife Federation.
A straight-A student, Elena takes a heavy load of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes, even as a member of her school’s swimming, cross-country and track teams.
Photography, however, is where her heart lies, and she shares that passion with others. In 2011, she taught photography as a form of therapeutic expression to children undergoing cancer treatment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda and organized a photo competition for them. For her efforts, she earned a Girl Scout Gold Award.
Dr. Gary Crouch, a pediatric hematologist/oncologist, says his daughter has always “seen things that other people didn’t.”
Three years ago, Elena trained her photographic eye on a new subject. Her mother, Dr. Caterina Minniti, a hematologist/oncologist, is an avid baker of Italian sweets. Elena came up with the idea of greeting cards with stylized close-ups of her mother’s desserts on the front with recipes on the back. She convinced local stores such as Brookville Pharmacy in Chevy Chase and the national Paper Source chain to sell them.
Elena’s business, Say It With Taste, has slowed recently with the demands of senior year. She plans to follow a preveterinary track at the University of Pennsylvania with a minor in photography.
“When I go out with my camera,” Elena says, “I see all these things that I wouldn’t have seen before."
