Today the sun rose red through the haze of the air polluted with smoke from the wildfires. Outside, the air has an acrid unpleasant taste on the back of one’s throat, and is possibly dangerous to breath. What a contrast from the normally pleasant atmosphere, often refreshed with the marine layer coming in from the Pacific!

To make this image, I used my Tamron 150-600mm telephoto zoom, a veritable honker of a lens, at 300mm. The other settings were ISO 250, 1/1000 of a second, and f/5.6. I got down on the floor of our dining room, and photographed the rising sun hand held through the curtains on the French doors—closed because of the bad air—leading out to the patio.