For my recent and much needed adventure, Keith and I headed to Hawai’i to Maui and the Big Island. I hemmed and hawed about bringing my tripod and wide-angle lens for Milky Way photos but am so stinking happy I did. While viewing the active volcano eruption at Kilauea Crater in Volcano National Park, we were awed by the sight. Surrounded by a crowd of people, I poked my head and camera up when I could to capture the fireworks. As the sun set, the lava became its own fireworks show, lighting up the night sky in celebration of Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of Fire and Volcanos.
I wondered what the Milky Way would look like over an active volcano and pulled out my PhotoPils app to gauge where it would be later in the night. I was in luck, at 4am it would be arching over the volcano, and it was also new moon (for dark skies). And so, we set back to our Airbnb for a few hours of napping before rising at 2:30am to get back to the park and hike to the lava overlook. We had a brief moment alone standing in front of the spewing earth in awe. You could hear the roaring of the lava, which sounded like a deep ocean stirring from the earth’s soul. It was magical.
I then got to work setting up my camera on a tripod with my 14mm lens for some long exposure shots. What resulted are some of my favorite images to date and memory of such a surreal slice of time with Kilauea.
