Scene Through the Lens with photographer Tom Gralish.
What just a week ago was a spring-time canopy of rosy blush blossoms is now a soft carpet of pink petals, on a sidewalk along Wayne Avenue in Germantown. Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
I made that pretty in pink picture the day before heading to Virginia on assignment, filling up four 64 GB cards making photos for three different stories (see the very bottom of this post for a clue).
The trip also left me on deadline for this column with little time to write much, so I am falling back on fill-ins.
Writer, comedian and satirist Andy Borowitz called it Lazy Columnist Syndrome and described it as using many short one-sentence paragraphs, repeating old material, or relying on so-called experts to supply quotes to fill up space.
Newspapers also routinely use stand-alone photos to fill holes when there aren’t enough words/stories on the page (dreadfully even sometimes calling our work “hamburger helper”).
So, with all of that in mind, and some space to fill, here’s a collection of cool images made by my Inquirer colleagues you may or may not have seen this week.
Finally, one I made on Wednesday, at the scenic overlook at milepost 100 on eastbound I-64 in Afton, Virginia. The view is just a mile east of Exit 99 and Rockfish Gap, where the southern end of the 105 mile-long Skyline Drive through Shenandoah National Park connects to the northern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway (which ends 469 miles south in Cherokee, N.C.). Not visible below the railing is US Rt. 250, the main road between Richmond and the Shenandoah Valley before the interstate was built (and long before that, a Monacan trail across the mountains).
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:
April 20, 2026: The water is turned back on in LOVE Park this week, marking another milestone as seasons change in the city. The splash fountain and basin-less main fountain in the park formally known as John F. Kennedy Plaza, was part of the site’s 2018 renovations, that came after the old park was flattened out, removing a traditional fountain and benches and levels that made it so enticing to skateboarders.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
April 13, 2026: Workers set up the stage — with a cooling tower backdrop — for a Gov. Mikie Sherrill event at the PSEG Salem and Hope Creek Nuclear Generating Station in Lower Alloways Creek, N.J. Sherrill later signed legislation intended to make way for new nuclear energy projects in the Garden State by removing a key permitting hurdle that has created a de facto moratorium on new nuclear power for decades. Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
April 6, 2026: Work continues into the night, two floors above street level in Old City.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
March 30, 2026: New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill (third from right) meets with members of the South Jersey business community while her youngest daughter, Marit, waits in lobby (rear). Mom was attending a fireside chat event hosted by the Chamber of Commerce of Southern New Jersey in Mount Laurel earlier this month.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
March 23, 2026: The plowed snow mountain range at a corner of the PATCO Haddonfield station parking lot in mid-March. After the big Jan. 25 and Feb. 23 snow storms the transit agency started a contest to guess exactly when the humongous snow mountain will finally melt. They are offering a $20 Freedom Card to the winners.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
March 16, 2026: Traffic moving at 45 mph on the Ben Franklin Bridge is photographed using a slow shutter speed from a PATCO commuter train traveling at 40 mph.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
March 9, 2026: Marcin Danych (left), a friend now living in Chicago, films Mariusz Sliwa, his wife, Magdalena, and their 6-year-old son, Tymek, from Poznan, Poland, next to the Rocky statue at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. When Mariusz was a boy, his father was “a typical factory worker; he was working a lot, too,” Sliwa said. “He worked seven days a week. Even weekends.” When they had time together at night, they would watch “Rocky,” “playing it over and over, in the VHS.” It was just a part of his childhood, so he wanted his own son to visit Philadelphia to experience it. And to make a video for his dad, who couldn’t make the trip. Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
March 2, 2026: Lynasia Allen, a junior horticulture student at W.B. Saul High School is on lunch break at the Convention Center while setting up for the PHS Philadelphia Flower Show before it opened to the public. Her school’s exhibit is titled, “Up-Rooted, Re-Planted.”Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
February 23, 2026: Glenn Bergman, along with his wife, Dianne Manning, and other bystanders at the President’s House, try to prevent a counter-protester from ripping down notes posted by visitors. The Mount Airy couple had just arrived for the annual Presidents’ Day rally by the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition on the other side of the wall. The confrontation was over in a few minutes when the woman left. Visitors have been taping informal signs to fill the void left by the removal of panels about slavery last month in Independence National Historical Park.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
February 16, 2026: Which came first: the dirty snowpacked berm of frozen slush or the graffiti? This is one of the larger urban artifacts revealed as the region emerges from weeks of a record snowpack from the Jan. 25 storm.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
February 9, 2026: Walking through a corrugated metal culvert called the “Duck Tunnel,” a pedestrian navigates the passageway under the SEPTA tracks on the Swarthmore College campus. Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
February 2, 2026: A light-as-air Elmo balloon rolls along a sidewalk in Haddonfield, propelled by the wind as heavy snow starts to turn to ice and sleet during Sunday's storm.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
January 26, 2026: The President’s House in Independence National Historical Park hours after all historical exhibits were removed on Thursday in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order in March that the content at national parks that “inappropriately disparage” the United States be reviewed. The site, a reconstructed “ghost” structure titled “Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation” (2010), serves as a memorial to the nine people President George Washington enslaved there during the founding of America.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
January 19, 2026: A low-in-the-sky winter sun is behind the triangular pediment of the “front door” of the open-air President’s House installation in Independence National Historical Park. The reconstructed “ghost” structure with partial walls and windows of the Georgian home known in the 18th century as 190 High St. is officially titled, “Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation” (2010). It is designed to give visitors a sense of the house where the first two presidents of the United States, George Washington and John Adams, served their terms of office. The commemorative site designed by Emanuel Kelly, with Kelly/Maiello Architects, pays homage to nine enslaved people of African descent who were part of the Washington household with videos scripted by Lorene Cary and directed by Louis Massiah. Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
January 12, 2026: Deepika Iyer holds her niece Ira Samudra aloft in a Rockyesque pose, while her parents photograph their 8 month-old daughter, in front of the famous movie prop at the top of the steps at the Philadelphia Art Museum. Iyer lives in Philadelphia and is hosting a visit by her mother Vijayalakshmi Ramachandran (partially hidden); brother Gautham Ramachandran; and her sister-in-law Janani Gautham who all live in Bangalore, India. Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer
