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Photography

Thankful | Scene Through the Lens

Family, friends, photography

Three year-old friends Lola Browne and Madelyn Turner (right) examine the letters in the storefront window of Cafe Lift as they wait inside for brunch with their mothers in Haddonfield, N.J. Owners Michael and Jeniphur Pasquarello opened the original Cafe Lift in Philadelphia’s Callowhill neighborhood in 2003. Scene Through the Lens runs every Monday on page B-2. There is a template in Roxen. This sentence runs at the top of the photo: More of photographer Tom Gralish’s visual exploration of our region can be seen in his blog at Inquirer.com/sceneontheroad.
Three year-old friends Lola Browne and Madelyn Turner (right) examine the letters in the storefront window of Cafe Lift as they wait inside for brunch with their mothers in Haddonfield, N.J. Owners Michael and Jeniphur Pasquarello opened the original Cafe Lift in Philadelphia’s Callowhill neighborhood in 2003. Scene Through the Lens runs every Monday on page B-2. There is a template in Roxen. This sentence runs at the top of the photo: More of photographer Tom Gralish’s visual exploration of our region can be seen in his blog at Inquirer.com/sceneontheroad.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer

I spent this Thanksgiving weekend being thankful.

Of course my family and friends are on the top of that list, but I’m also really thankful to still be taking pictures. After all, I was a photographer long before I got married, had kids and a grandson.

I was a photographer before I was the 8th man on my basketball team, before I got a driver’s license, before I graduated from high school, registered for the draft, lived on three continents, became an F.T.E. (do corporations still call us full-time equivalents?), visited all fifty states, bought and sold a few houses, and became eligible for social security.

This weekend, I thought about all that, and how I have been taking pictures since I was 12. How I sold my first news picture to the Associated Press while a junior in high school and recalled that I got my first regular newspaper paycheck the following year when I was hired to cover junior varsity sports for the Valley Times in North Las Vegas.

That was some fifty years ago, and I am thankful I still find satisfaction in every one of my newspaper photo assignments. I’m thankful I’ve worked in newsrooms alongside smart and creative journalists and have met interesting people, all while finding new ways to photograph subjects — even when they seem to be the same story I’ve done many times before.

» READ MORE: Staff Photographer Tom Gralish’s 40 years at The Inquirer

I am thankful my bosses still recognize and value an attitude that sees every assignment as an opportunity to make photos better than those I made before. Like the 1930-40s New York crime photographer Weegee said, “You’re as good as your last picture.”

And, I am especially thankful those editors and publisher still provide space for me to share my visual stories with readers, and I hope my pictures continue to have the same impact on them as their stories have on me.

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: