Willamette Valley from Silver Falls State Park, Oregon

Canon 30D, 70-200 f/4L, ISO: 100, Aperture: f/11, shutter: 1/100 second, tripod: yes

I read that lens flare is gaining in popularity today.  At least it is with today’s photo 🙂  I didn’t have my lens hood on when taking this shot (I left it home), so I tried to shade the lens with my hat.  As you can see, I didn’t have much success with that technique.  And since I was aiming almost directly at the sun the hood probably wouldn’t have done much good anyway.  Aiming the lens more to the right would have reduced the chance of flare, but it wasn’t the composition I was looking for… so I got lens flare.

The valley is full of smoke these days from several nearby forest fires.  The bad air quality that goes with fire often yields amazing colors at sunset.  I added a little punch with the vibrance and clarity sliders in Lightroom.