The summer of 2015 was bone dry, following an unusually warm and dry winter in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State. By early summer, the snowpack in the mountains was zero. The summer brought the most 90°F days ever recorded for the Puget Sound region. When a series of lightning storms rolled through the state in mid-summer, fires were ignited that explosively burned over a thousand square miles of land, torching hundreds of buildings and millions of trees.

On the day of this photograph, the sun over my Olympic Peninsula home was casting an unusual orange color that was strangely eerie–a color that comes from forest fire smoke in the air. As the sun set, it took on a rich reddish-orange color. Here I photographed that fire sun with the organic shapes of Sword Fern fronds in the foreground.

PRINT INFORMATION: This photograph is printed from a digital file on Japanese Mulberry paper using pigment ink. Matting is done with a thick white cotton rag mat. All materials are archival; designed to last for generations.

LIMITED EDITION: This photographic print is part of a limited edition printed by photographer Lee Rentz. The edition consists of 250 prints, which includes all sizes and methods of printing.