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Scene Through the Lens with Inquirer photographer Tom Gralish.
The Benjamin Franklin Bridge and pedestrians on the Delaware River Trail are reflected in mirrored spheres of the “Weaver's Knot: Sheet Bend” public artwork on Columbus Boulevard. The site-specific stainless steel piece located between the Cherry Street and Race Street Piers was commissioned by the City’s Public Art Office and the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation and created and installed in 2022 by the design and fabrication group Ball-Nogues Studio. The name recalls a history that dominated the region for hundreds of years. “Weaver’s knot” derives from use in textile mills and the “sheet bend” or “sheet knot” was used on sailing vessels for bending ropes to sails. Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer

This week after completing two different portrait assignments I was was looking around as I walked back to my parked car.

I’d seen it in Old City before, but on a really clear, cold morning when the sky’s color perfectly matched that of the Ben Franklin Bridge towering over the public artwork on Columbus Boulevard, I looked more carefully at the giant knot of stainless steel spheres.

Sometimes you go looking for pictures but “found” pictures are most often located just where you happen to be.

I studied the shiny surface, looking through my viewfinder, varying the focal length on the two zoom lenses I had (a 24-70mm and 70-200mm) and switching between different apertures to achieve either more or less depth-of-focus on the orbs and the reflections they mirrored.

I also made a slightly “harsher” version of the blue sky and bridge.

Weather the day before was in sharp contrast — literally, with winds blowing rain almost knife-like horizontally at me as I fought with my umbrella to make a picture outside following another indoor portrait assignment.

I ended up moving to the roof of the garage where I parked my car.

A note in support of copy editors: You know how seeing writers (mostly on social media) confusing a possessive pronoun with a contraction or thinking an apostrophe always indicates possession can be mildly distfacting or jarringly annoying to readers? (it’s vs. its and your vs. you’re.)

Well as a long-time photo caption reader (and writer) there are two common errors that exasperate me. Those would be the names of a common migratory water fowl and one of Philadelphia’s three major waterways.

Addam Schwartz, The Inquirer’s senior multiplatform editor, wrote the rain caption for the print version of the photo. He correctly changed my “Schuylkill River” to just plain “Schuylkill.” He knows the word means “hidden river,” so “River” is redundant. (It was named by Dutch settlers in the early 1600s. Prior to that time, the river was called Manayunk, meaning “where we go to drink” or Ganoshowanna, meaning “falling water” by the Lenape.)

In my defense I also know all that. Decades ago Suzanne Weston, the copy editor at Inquirer Magazine when I was on staff there educated me. But I do make mistakes, especially when typing captions on my laptop in my car.

(By the way, Schuylkill Expressway IS okay.)

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: