It’s all about the light | Scene Through the Lens

That bridge photo was made as I headed east to New Jersey to photograph the sun setting behind the Philadelphia skyline on the penultimate full day of summer 2022.

Two days later, the light of the autumnal equinox is directly over the equator and photographers (those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway) once again can start to enjoy that golden fall light and the long shadows we get while the days grow shorter as the sun moves toward the winter solstice (yes, I do know it’s the earth that’s moving, not the sun).

Photography is all about recording the light, and In the real world (outside of artificial lighting in the studio) it’s the quality of that light that makes a picture special.

Working 2-10 p.m., I also worry about the darkness. I am always aware of how much time I have before it takes all the light away. Will I be photographing people indoors or making a pretty portrait by balancing the light from a flash with a twilight sky? Or capturing the warm glow from office windows for a real estate photo?

This past week I photographed more than 100 life-size lantern sculptures - Lights in the Darkness - for a Suicide Awareness Month event for everyone affected by mental health illness. It was scheduled to began right at dusk, so I thought I would arrive a little before 7 p.m. to capture the figures with a cool blue background of daylight fading from the sky.

But as I listened to the speakers and watched the light inside the human representations begin to glow, first softly, then brighter as the ambient light slowly disappeared, I decided they should be photographed only when it was absolutely dark.

I waited for “real” people to wander among the human representations, but passersby seem to respect the artwork, and stayed on the edges of the installation. It wasn’t until the program and interfaith service ended did the crowd walk into the scene. But by then I had decided photos of the pieces were more poignant when they were by themselves.

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