The light of spring
Scene Through the Lens with photographer Tom Gralish.
I work 9 to 5 now, though not long ago I spent a few years on the night shift.
Except for a few dark days in the dead of winter, my days are now eight hours of daylight — all the time, every day.
Back when I worked 2 to 10, the sun was high when I started and long gone by the time I finished.
Those days weren’t measured in minutes or hours, but in the way the light transformed.
Night didn’t arrive all at once — it seeped in. The sky darkened gradually to a deeper blue, streetlights and headlights came on and eventually the sky turned black (actually, dark gray, with urban light pollution, but I’m trying to wax poetically here).
That’s why it felt like such a joy to be out the other evening, on a warm spring night, photographing at twilight.
And speaking of spring and evenings, remember the humongous snow mountain range at the PATCO Haddonfield station? The South Jersey transit agency held a contest at the beginning of last month, inviting people to guess when it would finally melt.
This was how it looked on the day of my prediction — one I missed by just four days.
In the end, PATCO — channeling the R&B group formed at Philadelphia’s High School for the Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA) — officially called it a done deal and declared it all melted Tuesday evening, March 31, 2026.
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: