Remembering an unusual optical phenomenon created by an increasingly common event.
In September, I was driving north on highway 101 along the southern Oregon Coast. Inland, and to the northeast, heavy smoke from a forest fire was clearly visible. As I drove closer, some of the smoke drifted west, over the ocean.
As I got closer still, the light from the sun dimmed significantly—almost like solar eclipse. There were no other sounds apart from the ocean waves and everything took on a red-orange color cast.
Smoke from a nearby forest fire filters the disc of the sun and creates an intense orange spot of sunlight on the waves. Photo: © Donald J. Rommes
I parked at a pullout and got our of the car to observe, From my vantage point, clouds of smoke obscured part of the sky and acted like a deep orange filter. The sun's disc turned a dim orange and everything was bathed in an eerie golden light.
I had only my small digital camera with me, but made several exposures, overlapping several side-by-side frames. Later, I was able to merge several of the best exposures into a single, larger image. More recently, I was able to "enhance" that photo to create an even larger file for bigger prints.
The resulting photo is unusual, but serves as a visual metaphor for the increasing threat of wildfires. To us at Iris Arts, it is also a reminder to carry a camera at all times and remember that, in this digital age, big prints are possible from small files with a bit of luck and good technique.
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