Smoke can really just be a burden when it comes to photography. It creates this nasty grey haze that you really can’t do anything about. Granted we can’t control the weather to begin with but when it’s thick smoke and the wind is just making it worse, then no matter if it’s sunrise, middle of the day or sunset, it just is what it is. So what can you do?
I found two basic answers, either you shoot and deal with it as best as you can in post or you don’t shoot. One leads to photographs the other doesn’t. If you decide to shoot be a little bit pickier. Find better backgrounds, get higher if you need to, look for bright subjects that pop out and if it absolutely sucks then just stop and wait a bit. There’s no point in making a bad photograph because that doesn’t help you. If none of that works that in post you can use the Dehaze slider in ACR or Lightroom which can help, combined with a gradient filter that you use on the sky bringing down the temperature.