Sara Krulwich has been covering the Tony Awards for years. This year, she’s being honored by them.

She joined The New York Times in 1979 but did not always feel welcome. A photo technician once slapped her when she expressed concern about the quality of a print, she said, and when she first started, the New York Press Photographers Association declined to grant her admission.

She became a culture photographer in 1994 and gradually overcame obstacles in the theater world, too, where producers were accustomed to controlling visual images of their shows by granting access only to photographers they hired.

Over time, she turned theater photography into a beat at the Times, becoming a mainstay on the arts pages while documenting more than a hundred plays and musicals each year. And on June 4 — six days before the Tony Awards air on television — she will be the first journalist recognized with a Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theater.

Here, annotated with comments from Ms. Krulwich, are a few of the thousands of photos she has taken, chosen to illustrate the demands of her job and the changing technology she has used to do her work.