From Gen. Washington to SEPTA’s Festibuses, timing is everything

I was so close. If I had made it through one or two more green lights while driving from my last assignment... Or if I had not waited so long for the “right” car to pass in front of the building I was photographing for a real estate story...

Then I might’ve been there seconds earlier when Gen. Washington stood at the back of his SUV placing his sword on the hip of his dress uniform. Or photographed him walking through the empty parking garage.

Instead, I arrived at the elevators seconds after he did.

There isn’t a day that goes by that I am not reminded how photography is all about the timing. And I don’t mean just the 1/500th of a second your camera shutter is open.

There is an expression “f/8 and be there” often attributed to legendary photographer Arthur “Weegee” Fellig. The “there” has come to mean not fussing over the technical aspects — an f-stop/lens aperture — of taking pictures but instead being “in the moment.”

Weegee, however, meant it literally. He was a New York crime scene photographer in the 1930s and 1940s famous for arriving before the police and made his living getting there and taking a picture before his competition (there were a dozen newspapers and tabloids in Manhattan back then).

Another “good timing” came for me last Saturday. I was in Center City with my family on my day off. There were so many people in the Christmas Village in LOVE Park we walked along the outskirts, where we found the annual Festibus competition. That’s where SEPTA employees volunteer their time to decorate buses for the holidays and compete for bragging rights. And let riders vote for their favorites among the eight decorated buses parked along JFK Boulevard and 15th Street.

I made a fast photo of SEPTA workers costumed as Care Bears who went over to a passing coworker stopped in traffic. But I couldn’t leave with only a photo of the backsides of mechanic Raymond Borges and operators Jose DeCos and James Smith.

So I stayed behind to document more of their greeting visitors and some of the other buses.

One more “right place” earlier in the week, covering another Semiquincentennial event, local artists painting 20 Liberty Bell replicas for placing in Philadelphia neighborhoods in 2026.

Walking out of the garage where the artists were working, I heard a news helicopter and looked up, then over to see a column of smoke rising to the north.

I got there as firefighters were just starting to climb up to the rowhouse roofs on North Lambert Street.

The fire, near La Salle University, was placed under control within an hour. But sadly, a 70-year-old mother of three did not get out in time and died in the blaze.

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: