“THERE’D BEEN A rainstorm,” says longtime neighborhood resident Monte Travis, a respected San Francisco attorney. “I looked out the living room window and saw this. I grabbed my camera, opened the kitchen window and took the picture. My timing was very lucky, as the rainbow proved quite ephemeral.”

Travis is far more than an amateur photographer. He and his camera have traveled around the world. Yet he says: “Many of the most amazing things we ever see or experience are right at home.”

He not only grabbed his camera, but also was moved to verse. He wrote, in part:

And what in the world is that?
It looks like a rainbow, but flat.
Its colors are pure,
But I’m just not sure,
Why it should be where it’s at.

I’ve scoured the web for a clue.
Found nothing that halfway will do.
They all say it’s rare,
For it to be there,
But none makes a case that rings true.

Here’s another of Monte Travis’s exceptional close-to-home photographs.

“I’ve been many places, but in terms of the harmonious marriage of awesome natural beauty with equally awesome manmade beauty, it’s hard to think of anything anywhere that beats that bridge over that harbor entrance,” Travis says. He calls this photograph “an almost magical combination of geography, human inspiration and dumb luck. As many times as I’ve looked at it, walked on it and photographed it, it always has something new to show me.”