The Rainbow

This one is from 2019, one of my first trips to the Grand Canyon. I was there a few days ahead of a workshop, which meant I had time to run around and explore with no agenda beyond seeing what the canyon wanted to do.

What it wanted to do that evening was storm. I waited it out, watching the rain move through, and when it finally passed I got out and started walking, looking for something. A lot of landscape photography is just waiting for the weather to make up its mind.

This is Point Imperial, on the North Rim, looking out toward Mount Hayden, the white-capped spire catching the last light at the bottom of the frame. The storm left everything behind it soft and saturated: the purple-blue sky, the pink in the clouds, the haze settling into the canyon layers. And then the rainbow dropped through all of it like it was aimed.

Storms are the price of skies like this. Everybody wants the color, and almost nobody wants to sit in the rain for it. The canyon on a clear afternoon is beautiful, and it’s the same shot everyone else has. This one only existed for about twenty minutes, right after the storm broke.

More of my photography at imagesbyericbrown.com or on Instagram .