The Morning I Had Forgotten

I was on Miami Beach that morning for a video shoot with my friend Melina Almodovar.

Photography was not the reason I was there, but I had my camera with me and continued looking at what was happening around me.

The Atlantic was deep blue beneath a sky filled with intense gold and orange light. Clouds stretched across the horizon and surrounded the rising sun.

Years later, when I began working on this photograph again, something bothered me.

The contrast seemed almost too dramatic.

The blue of the ocean against that intensely warm sky made me wonder whether I had pushed the photograph too far while editing it.

So I went back to the original RAW file.

The colors were already there.

That surprised me.

I have watched many sunrises since this one. Each time, I admire the one happening in front of me. Then another comes along, and somehow that newer experience begins to replace the previous one in my memory.

I remembered being on Miami Beach.

I remembered why I was there.

What I had forgotten was just how extraordinary this particular morning looked.

The photograph hadn't.

More than a decade later, it gave the morning back to me.

The Morning I Had Forgotten was made during a July 25, 2016 morning on Miami Beach when Colón was participating in a video shoot for his friend and musician Melina Almodovar.

The photograph is dominated by the contrast between two visual environments. The Atlantic remains comparatively cool and deeply blue while the atmosphere above the horizon is illuminated by intense gold and orange sunrise light.

Dark cloud formations interrupt the brightest areas of the sky, allowing the light to emerge through multiple layers rather than presenting the sun as an isolated subject. The relatively narrow band of ocean provides a cool visual foundation beneath the considerably warmer and more complex sky.

The significance of the photograph changed when Colón revisited the image years later. The intensity of the color contrast caused him to question whether the appearance had resulted from later processing. Examination of the original RAW file confirmed that the unusual relationship between the blue Atlantic and illuminated sky was present at capture.

The photograph therefore became not only a record of the sunrise but evidence of a visual experience that had become less vivid in the photographer's own memory.

I have seen so many skies and so many sunrises that one extraordinary morning can eventually be replaced in my memory by another.

That does not mean the earlier one became less beautiful.

It means another experience became more immediate.

When I returned to this photograph, I questioned what I was seeing.

Could the ocean really have been that blue?

Could the sky really have been that warm?

Had I exaggerated the difference between them?

The RAW file answered those questions.

No.

That was the morning.

I had simply seen too many mornings since then to remember this one clearly.

There is something strange about discovering that a photograph has preserved a visual memory more faithfully than the memory I carried with me.

The photograph remained unchanged.

The sunrises that came afterward changed what I remembered.

For a moment, looking at this photograph again, I was able to see that morning as I had seen it then.

It had been there all along.

I was the one who had forgotten.

Made on Miami Beach, Florida, on July 25, 2016, The Morning I Had Forgotten belongs to a group of photographs Colón made while participating in a morning video shoot with his friend Melina Almodovar.

The original camera file is identified as 425A4981.CR2.

Another photograph from the same morning, Undisturbed (FCS-PH-0148), records a woman meditating on the beach while facing east toward the rising sun.

Although both photographs originated during the same outing, neither resulted from the primary purpose of Colón's presence on Miami Beach. He was there for the video production and photographed subjects and conditions that attracted his attention while the morning unfolded.

The Morning I Had Forgotten acquired its present significance when the photograph was revisited in 2026. Colón initially questioned whether the dramatic warm-cool contrast had been introduced or exaggerated during processing. Comparison with the original RAW capture established that the essential color relationship was already present in the recorded scene.

The later realization became part of the work's history: the photograph had preserved the appearance of a morning whose visual intensity had gradually been displaced in memory by the many sunrises that followed.