As most of you know, I am not averse to manipulating a photo, as long as it expresses an artistic vision. However I am not a fan of Instagram type filters{{1}} just for the sake of filters.

An unfortunate side effect of the popularity of these filters is that on a day like today, no one will believe that these are the real colours. No, I did not use any colour filters, either physical or software on this image. The colours are due to a lot of smoke in the air. 

As one person I met on my walk described it, it was like looking through cheap sunglasses. I could “correct” the colours so the image looks more normal, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of the image…

PS this was taken at noon (12:07 to be precise) and yes it was also that dark. I could not see where the sun was, even at high noon…

[[1]]Back in the film days, a lot of these effects were created with physical filters put in front of the lens. Companies like Coken had literally hundreds of different types of these filters. And even back then, I thought most of them were tacky…[[1]]