I am SO BUMMED. I took several photos of the sunrise this morning and absolutely NONE of them came out with the blood-red color of the sun as it rose above the smokey horizon to the east. It was a breath-taking red and why the camera couldn’t capture that color is probably a physics issue.
What the camera saw was this:
But what I saw was more like this:
Yeah, I had to color that in.
But it really was that breath-taking of a red sun. The smoke is from several wildfires in Washington State and in Central Oregon and as the sun rose up through the haze, it was glowing red.
I’m sad the photos did not come out – I waited all day to upload them and see. Crushing disappointment. If the sun is red tomorrow, I will take several more photos, changing my camera settings every time. Surely I will get one to come out??? I’d hate to face that disappointment again.
But I will live.
And speaking of living (this is totally unrelated to red suns): the duck is still alive! He was still hanging out at the same pond, in almost the same place he’s been since his last sibling died, but he’s lost his black-and-yellow down! The pin feathers are coming in and he’s starting to look like a mallard! A little mallard, but a mallard all the same. And he’s still living. If he gets much older, he will look like all the rest of the young mallards and we will lose track of him, but that’s a good thing. I am just amazed that a little orphan duck could survive so long.
Jaci Dawn 
I’m glad ducky is still around!
Looking at your photos, the camera “thinks” the subject is backlit, so it’s overexposing the photo. Try turning off “auto white balance”, or try using the “landscape” setting, or….
Another trick is to look at the photo properties, details, write down the f-stop, exposure time, and iso speed. Go to manual and change the f-stop to a larger number. (about double what the original was) That should give you your color saturation?