Smile | Scene Through the Lens

That’s one of the last pictures I made before going into isolation this week.

I’ve been really lucky. All of my photographer coworkers, most of my friends, all my immediate family and many relatives have all tested positive for COVID at least once. I almost made it three full years.

So much has happened in the past three years. I recall my very first personal memory of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (as it was called then) came as I was leaving my hotel to fly home from covering the Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina. My wife told me on the phone, “stay away from crowds. Airports are the places most people are getting it.”

A month later, I photographed then-candidate Joe Biden stopping in Philadelphia - rather than attending another primary victory at a rally in Ohio - on his way to Wilmington. There, he would go on to win the presidency without leaving his house for months.

The next day, the NBA suspended their season. And the day after that, I photographed the Philadelphia Orchestra playing their last in-person concert for a while - in an empty Verizon Hall.

As we enter the fourth year of the pandemic, I will keep optimistically looking all around me, appreciating and photographing the things that make me smile.

“Never regret anything that made you smile.” – Mark Twain

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 Inquirer’s local news section. Here are the most recent, in color:

» SEE MORE: Archived columns and Twenty years of a photo column