SunSmoke – a catchy name for a natural phenomenon, and not a great one. Great for image making to a degree, but lousy for human consumption, of which I did way too much. The transformation of this landscape caught me completely off guard. I’d been to this very locale a few times and this was so strange.
SunSmoke
Transforming Realities into Alien Landscapes
Wildfire smoke alters atmospheric physics, acting as a massive diffusion box and optical filter across vast geographical areas. During peak fire seasons along the Pacific Coast Highway near Jenner, airborne particulates scatter shorter blue wavelengths while allowing heavy amber, crimson, and slate tones to pass through. This phenomenon, captured under the focus of SunSmoke, shifts a well-known coastal landscape into an eerie visual realm. The atmosphere stops acting like clear air and begins behaving like a dense, tinted volume, reinterpreting scale, depth, and color relationships.
Atmospheric Color Casts as a Tool for Surrealism – SunSmoke
In traditional landscape photography, clarity and natural white balance anchor the scene in geographic reality. However, when heavy particulate matter saturates the sky – as in SunSmoke, the camera sensor records an altered reality. Heavy color casts strip away localized colors, reducing vibrant ocean greens, dark beach sands, and sea stacks into monochromatic tonal layers.
This loss of localized contrast flattens the distance between foreground features and the distant horizon. When color information is compressed into uniform hues, familiar landmarks lose their earthly context. Viewers recognize the structural forms of sea stacks and breaking waves, yet the alien palette forces the mind to reinterpret the setting as an uncharted planet or sci-fi landscape.
Manifestation Across the PCH Image Series – SunSmoke
The transition from real-world coastal scenery to atmospheric abstraction unfolds systematically throughout this photo set:
- Warm Amber Diffusion: The early frames of SunSmoke show a heavy, warm amber haze enveloping the offshore sea stacks. The sun burns through as a soft, brilliant white core surrounded by glowing metallic oranges. The ocean mirror captures this intense glint, turning the Pacific water into a sheet of liquid copper.
- Deepening Sunset Horizons: As the angle of light shifts, the warmth cools into dusky, desaturated tones. The horizon line dissolves completely into smoke haze, removing the visual boundary between water and sky. The shorelines, dark sand, and jagged sea stacks sit isolated against a dark twilight backdrop.
- The Crimson Orb Abstraction: The final image in SunSmoke strips away all terrestrial landmarks, leaving only a zoomed-in perspective of the sun suspended in a pale violet and slate gradient. The smoke strips away the daylight glare, revealing a defined pinkish-red sphere complete with horizontal atmospheric bands.
This final image highlights the concept of surreal color casts. Deprived of context like ocean waves or coastal rock formations, the sun no longer resembles Earth’s daytime star. The muted pink glow and visible density layers give the sun the distinct appearance of a gas giant suspended in deep space, akin to Jupiter.
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