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Photography

What comes around | Scene Through the Lens

Anniversaries and holidays

Caroline Small wheels her 2-year-old great-granddaughter atop a bag of trash as she carts it to a drop-off site at the Tustin Playground at 60th Street and West Columbia Avenue. Residential trash collection stopped when a strike was called by District Council 33. Small lives just around the corner and said of the toddler, “She was just walking too slow.” Scene Through the Lens runs every Monday on page B-2. There is a template in Roxen. This sentence runs at the top of the photo: More of photographer Tom Gralish’s visual exploration of our region can be seen in his blog at Inquirer.com/sceneontheroad.
Caroline Small wheels her 2-year-old great-granddaughter atop a bag of trash as she carts it to a drop-off site at the Tustin Playground at 60th Street and West Columbia Avenue. Residential trash collection stopped when a strike was called by District Council 33. Small lives just around the corner and said of the toddler, “She was just walking too slow.” Scene Through the Lens runs every Monday on page B-2. There is a template in Roxen. This sentence runs at the top of the photo: More of photographer Tom Gralish’s visual exploration of our region can be seen in his blog at Inquirer.com/sceneontheroad.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer

There was a time during staff meetings or talking with colleagues in the photography department I intentionally avoided any mention of negatives, Dektol or loupes and light tables.

I definitely never started a sentence with, “back in the day.”

Oprah said it, so it must be true: 60 is the new 40. I have now accepted and embraced the fact I’m one of the Inquirer’s senior journalists - coincidentally around the time of my 40th anniversary at the newspaper.

Covering life in Philadelphia all those decades, the anniversaries just keep on coming. I photographed Caroline Small wheeling her great-grandbaby to her garbage drop-off site after leaving the mayor’s press conference on the first day more than 9,000 city employees went on strike. It wasn’t her first trash rodeo either.

Thankfully July doesn’t only bring back memories of smelly trash. My wife and I moved here then, settling in over the Fourth of July weekend, and I first reported to work on July 5th.

I missed photographing that weekend, but in the years since I have always tried to have a part in our coverage of Independence Day events.

I had out of town family plans this year but was able to sneak in a morning with an early parade.

And, a week ago I shared a few images I made while talking and photographing Doug Dash working outside during the heat wave. He’s retired, but still working - a lot of it on and around his home. He shared how much he enjoyed it, especially decorating, and mentioned coming in second in a Fourth of July house contest a few years ago. He promised to this year he’d top that. So of course I had to check it out. Just like the tree whitewashing, I took more photos than the newspaper could ever use.

While Dash was up on the roof his wife Janet brought me a cold Arnold Palmer - iced tea with lemonade. So you might ask, how do I keep photographing trash, and heat waves and holidays, even after 40 plus years? It’s people like Miss Small. And Doug and Janet.

You just know I am going to drive by their Collingswood home come Christmastime. It’s hard to imagine having a better job..

Since 1998 a black-and-white photo has appeared every Monday in staff photographer Tom Gralish’s “Scene Through the Lens” photo column in the print editions of The Inquirer’s local news section. Here are the most recent, in color: