These shots were taken in 2010, on one of the days when the air current carried enough smoke from the Moscow region bog fires to cause a whiteout in St. Petersburg. One morning we woke up and it looked like darkness before a rainstorm, except there was not a cloud in the sky. The sun was partially visible and red--a phenomenon usually observed in the desert, there were barely any shadows, all the colors were distorted giving the day a nightmarish feel. Due to the high particle count and the heat it was difficult to breathe, we felt as if we were underwater (although this is absolutely nothing comparing to the conditions in which the Moskovites have been living for months). Because of the color spectrum shift, the only blue colors I found in the normally bright summer landscape were in the garbage strewn around the forest. I never thought it was so easy to turn off the sun.