Flags for the fallen | Scene Through the Lens

While I am officially a Baby Boomer (born following the end of World War II, between 1946 and 1964) I am also part of the generation that came of age after the military draft ended in 1973.

The all volunteer military has widened the gap between civilian and military populations in the United States, so Americans now have fewer connections with veterans and military members.

That is not to say we forget the sacrifices of those who gave their lives for our country.

In 2000 Congress passed the National Moment of Remembrance Act so we all would pause for a moment of silence - at 3 p.m. on Memorial Day - to remember those who gave their lives in service to America and its freedom.

Whenever I am working the holiday weekend - like yesterday - I try to balance my coverage by picturing both the solemn and the fun.

The flag photo at the very top here was made on Friday, my day off.

I stopped in the morning while on my way to the gym when I saw the fire company ladder truck. I never made it there, hoping I could make a picture for this column. You can see it worked out (no pun intended).

They had just started when I parked across the street and it took the two firefighters almost ninety minutes of lifting (again, no pun intended) to place each of the 31 flags, one at a time.

I knew this would not end up as a multi-photo display package as the images of each individual flag hanging could get redundant. It was destined to be just a single image, but I decided to make it an exercise (that one was intentional) in photographic variety.

You can see from the 36 frames (like a roll of 35 film) on the simulated “contact sheet” that I moved around quite a bit while they were doing it.

I mentioned a contact sheet. And film. Since going digital (it’s been almost a quarter century now) I don’t really miss the darkroom. But I do miss working with photo editors, and going through rolls of negatives and talking about the images with someone else.

Newrooms have downsized and we photographers mostly now edit our own photos - usually in our cars. But The Inquirer still has a few, and I asked our night photo editor Jasmine Goldband to look through the contact sheet.

Of course, with a digital camera, I took (many) more than 36 photos, but those do represent each place I stopped and pointed my cameras. She said she could see my “eye move around to all of these angles as you work.”

Goldband picked two she liked best: the image below and the one she chose, up top. She said of that one, “...graphic and storytelling. The reflection plus the repeated pattern of the flags makes the tighter one the winner for me. Has the human, storytelling and pleasing lines.”

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: