Holiday bustle | Scene Through the Lens

There are always little girls and boys dressed up in fancy holiday dresses and tuxedos — to see Philadelphia Ballet’s classic Nutcracker (with lots of young dancers their age on stage).

Philadelphia Ballet’s “The Nutcracker” continues nearly daily through Dec. 30, including a sensory-friendly performance at noon on Dec. 26. At the Academy of Music, Broad and Locust Streets. Tickets are $25-$352. philadelphiaballet.org, 215-893-1999.

Every publication does it at this time of the year, so please take a look back with 2023 in Visuals, the Inquirer’s collection of the year’s most stunning images, captured by my award-winning colleagues.

And, here are few of my own visual highlights from 2023, photographed by some of the almost 310 million current smartphone users in the U.S. today (A recent survey found 91% of them prefer to use “the camera in their pocket” rather than a “real” one.)

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: