Yes, it is April 1st, but this is a real photo from my digital trail camera. No, it is not the end of the world, the sun isn’t collapsing into a black hole, but there are quite a few things going on in this shot.

The sun looks black because it is so bright that it overloaded the sensors in the digital camera, which, when overwhelmed, sets the value to black instead of white. The white halo around the black dot is not bright enough to overload the sensor, but does washout the surrounding tree branches.

The rainbow rays shooting from the sun are a form of lens flare, and are an artificial artifact in photography, sometimes used deliberately for effect.

The amorphous white blob in the middle of the photo is most likely a sensor flare, where the bright sunlight reflects off the sensor then the lens, and then back to the sensor.

I don’t usually use my trail cam for avant-garde photography, so the fix for this was to make sure the camera wasn’t facing directly east or west so it wasn’t framing the rising or setting sun.