09/03/2026
Gandy Beach, tonight, fourteen minutes before the sun went down.
I call this one Gold Arch, and the name is the point. Look at the colors in that bow. There is red, there is orange, there is a little gold, and then it just stops. The blue and the violet that belong on the inside edge of every rainbow you have ever seen are almost gone.
That is not the edit. That is the time of day.
A rainbow can only be made of the light that is available to make it. With the sun three degrees off the horizon, the sunlight reaching those raindrops had just traveled through an enormous slice of atmosphere, and the atmosphere strips out blue on the way. By the time that light arrived it was already red and orange, so the bow it painted came out red and orange too. Push this another ten minutes toward sunset and you get what is called a red rainbow, a single band of crimson with no other color in it at all.
The height is the other gift of a low sun. A rainbow rises as the sun sinks, and it hits its ceiling right at sunset, when the arch stands as tall as an arch can stand. This one topped out near 39 degrees, which is about as close to a full half circle as the Gulf coast will hand you. That is why it fits the bay from shoreline to shoreline with the towers at one foot and the water at the other.
Fourteen minutes. That was the entire window. Ten minutes earlier the bow was lower and colder. Ten minutes later the sun was gone and so was the rainbow, because a rainbow needs direct sun and the horizon takes it away all at once.
Here is why I think this one belongs on a wall, and it is not the reason people usually pick my work.
Most of what I shoot is loud. Lightning, black cloud, water getting hammered. This is the opposite. It is warm, it is wide, it is quiet, and there is almost nothing in it competing for your attention. That makes it the piece that works where a storm print would be wrong. A bedroom. A waiting room. An office where people are already tense enough. It brings light into a room instead of drama, and rooms need both.
Available as a print in any size, on archival paper, canvas, metal, or acrylic. Tell me the wall and I will tell you what fits. Link is in the first comment.
📍 Gandy Beach, Old Tampa Bay, Florida.
