Shot from the driver's seat of an old car parked on a forest road just after a summer storm, through a windshield beaded with raindrops, a vivid analog film photograph in a vertical 4:5 frame, Canon AE-1 with a 28mm f/2.8 lens, Kodak Ektar 100: a full rainbow arcs over a dark pine forest against a slate-grey storm sky, the low sun behind the car lights the treetops a glowing gold, and a young woman in a bright yellow raincoat stands on the wet road a little way ahead of the car, small in the frame, her head tipped back to look up at it. The windshield sits between the camera and the scene like a pane of jewels: hundreds of raindrops of every size cling to the glass, each holding a tiny upside-down image of the rainbow and the gold trees, some merging into thin running streams. One black wiper blade rests at a slant across the lower left, stopped mid-sweep, with a clean arc of glass above it where it last passed and the rest of the glass still beaded. A faint reflection of the dashboard lies across the lower part of the glass. Along the bottom of the frame runs a strip of the dashboard: worn tan vinyl with a crack across it, a folded paper road map, a pair of gold aviator sunglasses and a cassette tape in a cracked case. A paper cup of gas-station coffee sits in the holder, a lipstick print on its lid. From the top right corner hangs the rearview mirror, holding a small bright reflection of the sunlit road behind the car, and a small cardboard air freshener cut in the shape of a pine tree dangles from it, mid-swing. The narrow asphalt road runs straight ahead, black and shining wet, with a faded yellow center line, and its puddles mirror the gold trees and the rainbow in long broken reflections. Faint wisps of steam rise from the warm asphalt where the sun touches it. At the right roadside, a yellow diamond-shaped deer crossing sign glows bright in the sun, its black leaping deer crisp. Beyond the sign, the wooden fence of a forest pasture runs along the ditch, beaded with water, and a hawk perches on one post, its feathers ruffled from the rain. She stands near the center line about twenty meters ahead, seen from behind and slightly to the side: the yellow raincoat is the stiff, shiny fisherman's kind, streaming with water, its hood pushed back, a long dark braid hanging down her back, black rubber boots planted in a puddle, both hands in her pockets, face turned up to the sky. Her shadow stretches out ahead of her along the wet road toward the rainbow, long and sharp. The raincoat is so wet and bright it seems to glow, beads of water rolling off its shoulders, the hem of a faded denim skirt showing beneath it. Tall dark pines and spruces crowd both sides of the road, their wet needles glittering. The sun from behind the car lights their tops a vivid gold-green while their lower trunks stay in deep blue-green shadow, so the forest looks lit from inside. Water drips steadily from the branches, each falling drop catching the sun as a spark, and the ditch beside the road runs with fast brown water. Ahead, the road climbs over a gentle rise into the trees, where the rainbow's right foot seems to touch down among the pines in a glowing veil of mist. The sky ahead is the bruised slate-blue of the retreating storm, heavy and textured, so the rainbow burns against it: a complete arc with clean bands of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet, the sky inside the arc noticeably brighter than the sky outside it, and a fainter second rainbow above with its colors reversed. Low shreds of white mist drift among the treetops, and the last drops of rain fall as fine bright streaks in the sun. High on the left, a single break in the cloud lets a column of pale light fall onto a distant hill. This is classic storm light: a low, warm sun from behind the camera front-lights the whole scene against the dark sky, so the gold treetops, the yellow raincoat, the deer sign and the wet road shine with an almost unreal brightness against the slate backdrop. Inside the car, the dashboard sits in cool shadow, a dark frame around the bright world outside. The air outside looks washed clean, every color doubled in intensity. Focus sits on the woman and the rainbow, with the raindrops on the glass just soft enough to read as glowing beads and the dashboard as soft shapes. Ektar gives rich, saturated color and fine grain, the yellow and gold popping hard against the deep slate, with slight warm halation around the brightest drops and a gentle dark vignette in the corners of the old wide lens. Some of the drops nearest the lens split the light into tiny rainbow sparks of their own. The palette: deep slate and blue-grey sky, the full spectrum of the rainbow, gold-lit treetops over deep blue-green forest, black shining asphalt, warm tan dashboard, and the yellow raincoat as the boldest color. They pulled over the moment the rain stopped, and she jumped out to see it before it faded. The photograph feels bright, fleeting and joyful, the kind of road-trip picture that stays pinned to a fridge for years.