Skip to content
Photography
Link copied to clipboard
Link copied to clipboard

Two pairs of hands | Scene Through the Lens

A tough job

August 7, 2023: Saying neither one was like Tom Sawyer, who tricked his friend Ben Rogers into finishing painting a fence in the Mark Twain novel, Woodrow Smith and Judith Pardun paint her fence together along busy Nicholson Road in Audubon, N.J.
August 7, 2023: Saying neither one was like Tom Sawyer, who tricked his friend Ben Rogers into finishing painting a fence in the Mark Twain novel, Woodrow Smith and Judith Pardun paint her fence together along busy Nicholson Road in Audubon, N.J.Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer / Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer

I recently marked an anniversary at The Inquirer, so I’ve been asked a lot lately if i haven’t gotten tired of being a newspaper photographer.

How can I be?

When I can drive past a scene straight out of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — but then pull Into an Acme parking lot, walk across four lanes of busy traffic, approach a couple I don’t even know and say, “Hi. Which one of you is Tom Sawyer, trying to trick the other one into painting the whole fence?”

Pardum, the mother of Smith’s son, bought the fence two years ago with COVID American Rescue Plan money and Smith put it up for her. She waited a few years before getting around to painting it. Thankfully, Pardum said, she was on vacation the week after last week’s heat wave, so the weather was much more conducive to outdoor work. And, it was Smith’s day off.

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