Door County, Wisconsin, was cloudless and still on this warm June evening, and I went to explore the lighthouse on Cana Island near my home with my new Mavic 3 Pro. I am fortunate to live in a place like the Door County Peninsula, well known for its long coastline and spectacular natural beauty in all seasons. However, we had been experiencing severe air degradation for a while because the wind patterns kept delivering smoke and haze from the extensive forest fires in Canada to all of us in the Midwest, and this day was especially bad.

I was interested to see what the sunset would look like because of the smoke and haze, and I wondered if I was going to see it at all. It ultimately didn’t disappoint; even better, I was the only person at this iconic Door County location throughout this hazy evening. There are several lighthouses along the coast, but Cana Island is the most iconic and best-known.

In some years, Cana Island is easily visited by walking on a dry causeway out to the island, but in years of Lake Michigan, high water level access is only by boat or wading and swimming. I probably spent more than an hour exploring this area's many vantage points and facets as the light got darker and darker as the evening progressed, and I had to land several times to put in fresh batteries.

I kept watching the sun as it slowly set and was happy to see that the disc continued to be visible. Just as I saw the sun getting near the horizon, the Cana Island Lighthouse light suddenly came on, and immediately I knew the composition I wanted and got into position. I used the tele camera on my drone to get some near-far compression into the scene and got to work. This image was the one that best expressed what I had previsualized and hoped for this evening.