Chasing rainbows

It is hard to find anything positive to ease the emotions of the moment when you are covering a tragic story. My assignment was to cover the town of Salem's candlelight vigil for the family of Jeffrey Bourgeois. It was roughly an hour before the vigil, and I knew that I was about to bear witness to the community's sadness, and it was weighing heavily on my own heart. Assignments like this are always emotionally difficult. Nevermind the fact that it was raining.

I had noticed that the sky was brightening, and as the rain pelted my windshild the sun broke through the clouds and bathed the Salem town green in the late afternoon golden light. It was like a cosmic wink. A little spiritual help. A vivid rainbow was forming, so I grabbed my camera and a ball cap and dashed out into the rain looking for interesting angles to compose with the rainbow in the frame, all the while trying to keep the rain drops off my lens. It is not my place as a journalist to attribute this rainbow to anything more than sun, rain and the refraction of light. As a human being however, well, that is a different matter entirely.