Where the Rainbow Began

I walked out of my house one day and saw the sky looking like this. It was beautiful.

I ran back inside to get my camera because I knew it might not stay that way for long. When I came out again, I started looking for the frame I wanted.

That is my house at the bottom of the photograph. I moved my body and the camera until the rainbow lined up with the chimney. I wanted it to look as if the rainbow was coming out of the house.

That part was deliberate. The sky gave me the moment, but I had to find the right place to stand.

When I look at this photograph, I remember seeing the colors, running for the camera, and making that small adjustment until everything came together.

The composition joins an expansive atmospheric event to a specific domestic structure. A dark roof forms a diagonal base across the lower left of the frame, while its small chimney provides a precise point of origin for the rainbow's rising arc.

That apparent connection results from viewpoint rather than physical proximity. Colón positioned himself so that the rainbow and chimney met in the two-dimensional frame. The alignment gives the image its visual premise: a phenomenon spanning the sky seems, for an instant, to begin at home.

Above the roof, warm cloud cover occupies much of the picture. Open blue sky at the lower right provides a cooler counterweight and makes the edge of the illuminated cloud more legible. The rainbow travels between these areas, guiding the eye from the modest architectural detail toward the broader movement of color and light.

The roof remains nearly a silhouette. Its restraint allows the sky to carry the photograph while preserving the personal significance of the location. Without the chimney, this would be a study of an evening rainbow; with it, the image becomes a carefully framed relationship between the photographer's home and the sky above it.

A rainbow has no beginning that we can walk toward. It appears to meet the earth from wherever we happen to stand, then seems to move when we do.

That quality makes this photograph a reminder that viewpoint is part of seeing. The sky was there before the camera came out. The chimney was there too. Their connection existed only after the photographer found the place from which they could meet inside a frame.

Home often becomes the point from which we measure the wider world. In this image, that relationship is briefly made visible. A familiar rooftop sits beneath something vast and passing, and the ordinary structure seems to release color into the sky.

The moment did not last. The photograph keeps the particular meeting of weather, light, place, and attention that Colón was able to see.

Where the Rainbow Began is preserved in the Francisco Colón Studio Photography Wing as an example of the artist's attention to fleeting changes in the landscape immediately around him.

The work's personal setting is essential to its provenance. The rooftop and chimney belong to the house where Colón lived when he made the photograph. His account also establishes that the apparent emergence of the rainbow from the chimney was intentionally produced by moving his position and camera. The archive preserves that decision as part of the work's creation.

Within the collection, the photograph connects observation with active composition. Colón responded quickly to a changing sky, then made a deliberate visual relationship between the rainbow and a familiar feature of his home. The image therefore records more than an unusual weather event: it shows how an ordinary place became the anchor for what he saw.

The exact city and country of capture remain unrecorded here. The Studio retains the verified personal setting and camera metadata without assigning a more specific location or converting the New York camera timestamp to an unsupported local time.