Volcanoes
1755 creative works found
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Memories of my return to Pompeii in 2007 .
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On occasion Mr. Axford has stirred the bubble cauldron with what some have coined ‘elitism’ due to the high standards that he expects of himself, but also from those around him, or at least a spark from the ‘photographer’ to understand commercial quality and what it means to the professional. Steve’s pursuit of the photographic eye has turned his attentions to some incredible scenes from below the equator. Jungles, volcanoes, poverty, sulfur mines. Scenes that are varied but most have some tinge of sadness, people studies from Indonesia show exactly how lucky we are… that makes me sad… tall growth forests that are being demolished… that makes me sad… hard working men emerging from massive green/yellow clouds of sulfur… that’s confronting! It’s the fungi and the volcanoes that Steve photographs which show a natural contrast in the delicacy and ferocity of our natural world. He’s even been known to do some conceptual portraiture, which he is better at than he would admit. As a big fan of the ‘volcanolotographer’ and the very competent (yet tough) co-moderator of the Wild Nature Group I interviewed Steve about what got him going, a sad story, what keeps him going and what he likes to see. Thanks to Steve for pouring his heart out… tripper! 1. Why do you do what you do…? / Do you mean why I take photos and why I take them of volcanoes, travel, people and fungi and things? A long story really, but here goes. / / Way back at the end of the last century – that would be about 10 years ago – my then wife, Pat, had just died of breast cancer and I was at a bit of a loss as to how to cope, when a travel brochure appeared in my letterbox. It was for adventure holidays, and among other destinations was one entitled “Volcanoes and Dragons”. I thought, that sounds different, so I booked myself on a 3 week adventure holiday traveling by fishing boat, bicycle and bimo from Flores to Bali. I didn’t even have a decent camera, so that bit comes a bit later. / / At that time I had been feeling a bit sick with stomach problems, so, just before I left for the holiday, I got a referral to see a specialist about it. I thought it was probably just a stress thing after Pat’s death; but apparently not. It seemed I had Hepatitis C. Now this was not good news as Hep C in 1998 was not a curable disease. / It seemed there was little I could do about it so I determined to carry on regardless and off I went to the volcanoes and dragons (the dragons being Komodo dragons). Since it was a malarial area, I thought that I’d best take some prophylactics and my doctor gave me some pills called Lariam. Lariam is out of favour now because it can cause some nasty psychiatric side effects, but the drug companies downplayed this at the time. It was a once a week pill and I had to take one a week before I left, which I did. A couple of days later I had an intense panic attack, which I thought was due to my general state of depression at the time and nervousness about traveling while sick. I recovered after a couple of days and flew to Jakarta. There were riots there at the time due to the monetary crisis which was expected to put 20 million people out of work in Java alone (can you believe that – the population of Australia!!), so I stayed in an airport hotel. I’d had my second lariam tablet the day I left, so it was working nicely when I arrived in Jakarta. That was some night. I started to “freak out” (I think this is the correct technical term) in my room and I felt I just had to get with some people or I would go mad. The journey from my room to the bar was terrifying as I felt totally lost and panicked the whole way. Eventually I found the bar and managed to relax by talking to the barman. He was a student who had had to quit studying when the monetary crisis hit. He traveled 5 hours, each way, to get to work every day. I was stunned and fascinated at the same time. I wanted to learn more about how people really lived in places like Java so maybe there where the people thing began, though I suspect the seeds were deeper than that. / / Anyway, I survived the night with the help of a couple of beers and a friendly barman, but then I had a long day’s travel the next day, first to Bali, and then on to Maumere in Flores. I was having panic attacks again, but managed to hold myself together for the flight to Bali. After waiting for 8 hours in Denpasar airport, they finally located a plane to take us to Maumere. I was starting to feel panicky again as I walked out to the plane. It was a Merpati airlines flight, though the plane was almost unidentifiable as all the paint seemed to be worn off and it was mostly down to bare metal. On board the seat I was in wouldn’t stop tilting as it was broken and the window had holes, both through the inner AND outer panes. Not surprisingly, we couldn’t fly above 3,500m as the pressurisation didn’t work; nor did the air conditioning so the plane was still very hot. / / Why am I talking about this flight? Well, perhaps it was because it was so intense and I was resigned to my life coming to an untimely and abrupt end on the side of an Indonesian mountain, ........ but then there was the volcano. We were flying through clouds when suddenly there was a clear patch. We were flying at about 3,500m, which put us 500m above a 3,000m volcano with the biggest crater I have ever seen. It was Tambora. The crater is 1km deep and 5km across and we were flying right along the edge of a 1000m cliff. I was suddenly no longer depressed or having a panic attack, I was just mesmerised. Check it out on Google Maps – it’s on Sumbawa in Indonesia and do a search on the eruption in 1816 that created that crater; it makes the Pinatubo eruption look like a fire cracker. The rest of flight was blissfully uneventful and I arrived safely on Flores to meet up with the tour group. On the first night the tour leader asked if anyone was taking lariam, because it was known to make people really paranoid. That was a huge relief to be told that, as I had thought I was genuinely going mad and this was “as good as it gets”. I stopped the lariam and the holiday was great and I had been reinfected with the travel bug and caught a new one, the volcano bug. / / The next 18 months was probably the worst part of my life. I was sick with Hepatitis and then sick with the newly developed treatment. I really did think that life as I knew may have ended and all I could do was just keep going and remember a line from Maxim Gorky’s writings – “Nothing lasts forever”. If it’s bad it will end, and if it’s good, appreciate it while it lasts. At the end of 6 months of chemotherapy (my last day was 31/12/1999) and a couple of months of recovery …..... I was cured!!!!! Now this was something to celebrate and to contemplate what really makes me tick. Travel was the first thing I planned. I went to Thailand, India and Burma that year and haven’t looked back since. I also bought my first digital camera and discovered that I could take the occasional good photograph – mainly because I found interesting things to photograph rather than having any wonderful artistic talent to be able to create something beautiful out of the very ordinary. I’ve never been able to do that. / / So that covers the travel, people and volcanoes, what about the fungi? Well, that’s just something that has been a passion of mine since I was a boy. I always loved searching for field mushrooms which were a popular meal in my family. Then, when I was a little older, I discovered magic mushrooms. I can’t say I liked eating them as they gave me a hell-of-a gut ache, but I loved searching for them and some of my friends were only to willing to take them off my hands. After I got my digital camera, and would go on bushwalks by myself I found that fungi actually made quite good subjects and there were many more varieties than just the grey or the golden ones. This became an excuse to go roaming around wet forests in Autumn and winter. / / Actually the photography is one big excuse to do what I love doing – travel, meeting people that seem so different but are really the same as us, climbing volcanoes and probably most of all, exploring the old growth forests of Australia and elsewhere. / / 2. What is your favourite subject? / Fungi – and volcanoes, and people, and – really anything that captures my imagination. I love macro photography because there are so many surprises and I love travel because it always stretches my imagination. 3. Volcanoes… which ones… why and how… how close have you been? / Not nearly as many as I would like. Krakatoa, Papandayan, Welirang, Bromo, Semeru, Keli Mutu all in Indonesia. Nyiragongo in Africa and Yasur in Vanuatu. Why? I happened to meet up with a couple of volcanologists who run volcano tours. First I traveled with them, and now I work with them – check it out http://www.volcanodiscovery.com/ Come along with me to climb 3 volcanoes (not too big) in Java in April or July. It’s a lot of fun and you get photo opportunities that even make me look good. Hope you don’t mind the plug. 4. What does quality mean to you? / An interesting question and I presume you are talking about photography. To me it means some real care and skill has gone into the production of the photograph rather than most of the effort into the marketing. It’s like seeing the difference between a David Attenborough documentary and the Funniest Home Videos. Both probably get similar ratings, but the Attenborough stuff is quality. Now some home movies are quality too, because the people who took them put in the effort to learn how to do it properly and have the talent to do it, even if they didn’t have the odd million or two to spend on the gear. I haven’t seen one of those on Funniest Home Videos. Quality isn’t anything to do with marketing. 5. Describe your love of nature… / Shit, describe it?. Nature is everything really. I think some people see man and nature as two separate things, but we are as much a part of it as the lions in Africa, or the fungi in a Tassie rainforest. I can’t understand how people can just stand by and allow so much to be destroyed, to gain so little. If we could bring back the Tasmanian Tiger I’m sure almost everyone would be overjoyed, but try to tell them that when the killed the last of them, We do know better now, but still we only seem to worry when the endangered species have big brown eyes like baby seals. It makes no sense to me. It’s like letting you fingers drop off because for just a moment you don’t need them.
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pahoehoe toe, this is part of a little crack…a pahoehoe flow advance across a road in Kalapana on the east rift zone of Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii.
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Mt Hood and the Columbia River Gorge taken from Mary Hill, Washington at sunrise
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Recent pahoehoe lava on the Big Island, Hawaii, fractured as it cooled. Glassy surface layer above, more vesicular below. Edges are razor sharp, if you fall it gets ugly!
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Kahea and I just came back from the Lava Flow and got a few photos of the full moon and the Lava action at Kalapana where the Lava is flowing into the Ocean.
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“If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let’em go, because, man, they’re gone.” ~Jack Handey (Deeper Thoughts) Lava entering the ocean at Kalapana, Hawaii. Zero modifications in post-processing.
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I shot this just a few minutes after the other shot of the same scene on here. The sunset just went on changing colour slightly for a little after this, with the evening encroaching and all the lights in the buildings coming on. Wonderful scene. Nikon D300 / Nikkor 300mm f/4 ED
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WILD AND FREE / / To spend an hour with Mountain Gorillas is one of the best wildlife experiences you can ever hope for. They captivate you with their eyes and you become lost in the moment. Your time with them goes so fast you are left just wanting more… / / Unfortunately, Mountain Gorilla numbers are small, with only approximately 700 left in the wild. The primary threat comes from forest clearance and degradation, as the region’s growing human population struggles to eke out a living. I am hopeful ways can be found to control these problems before it is too late. / / (Virunga volcanoes – Rwanda) / /
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Lava flow, Kilauea volcano, Big Island, Hawaii, USA / Hawaii Volcanoes National Park offers views of dramatic volcanic landscapes. Park highlights two of the world’s most active volcanoes. Measured from the seafloor, Mauna Loa is the tallest mountain on Earth. Kilauea constantly changes the landscape around it. Copyright © Olga Zvereva (All Rights Reserved) / This image can not be reproduced, copied or manipulated. / Please, do not use it in any way without my written permission.
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Sunset at Mount St Helens. Mount St Helens National Volcanic Monument, Washington, USA / Nearly 230 square miles of forest was blown over or left dead and standing when Mount St Helens erupted in May 18, 1980. Copyright © Olga Zvereva (All Rights Reserved) / This image can not be reproduced, copied or manipulated. / Please, do not use it in any way without my written permission.
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Mount Bromo National Park, Java, Indonesia MORE SCENIC ART HERE More surreal places…
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Volcano Mt. St. Helens from 32,000 feet / Featured in “From the Cockpit” Group, November 2009 / / /
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Here is another of Carol’s characters for her book (Tales Upon an Ocean Shore – book 2 in her Woodland Warriors series). This young fire dragon (Ignatius), is quite a handful – always trying to help, but never really doing it well!!! Here he has to set fire to the volcano….... can he do it in time to save his friends trapped by the evil Mer-Queen????
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Afternoon at Haleakala Crater, captured while hiking down into the crater on an usually sunny day. To believe you are actually in Maui in the Hawaiian Islands when viewing this type of scenery is quite surreal. All content & images © Stephen Vecchiotti. You may not use any images in any way without written consent from artist. All Rights Reserved.
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Mt Hood viewed from the Willamette Valley. / (Another drive by shooting.) MOST VIEWED IMAGES of all works by Bruce Dickson.
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Excerpt from the poem “Volcanic Fury” by Connie Estes. / ........... / “Crowned by a halo of clouds / Her ambiguous physique / Casts an illusion that fades her frame / Into the vaporous mist above her / She murmurs a deep rumble / Then with a mighty gesture / She quakes the earth below”............ Featured in “Insomniacs and Other Night Crawlers” group.
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I can’t remember which planet it is, but something I read many years ago said that one of the outer planets had ‘cold’ volcanoes. That has always fascinated me – how cool would it be to have a blue pyroclastic cloud?
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Colorful hot spring at Black Sand Basin in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming USA. / Most of Yellowstone sits in the vast caldera of one of the worlds largest super volcano’s. Nikon D300, Tokina 12-24mm, Circ Polorizer
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Mt Taranaki, North Island, New Zealand. Sunrise. / Egmont National Park. / Believe it or not the River is called the Stony River. / Great looking stones, especially when they’re wet. / Nikon D200 /
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abstract landscapeseries / view larger
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Featured in the group: In the Eyes of Danger / Featured in the group: Around The World Photograph / Canon EOS 20D / ISO 1600 / 1/4s f/5.6 / 100-400@130mm / Edited in CS4 Hawaii Volcanoes National Park / Big Island Of Hawaii
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Crater Lake at sunset. Mt. McLoughlin at 9945 feet hides on the horizon. The deepest lake in the United States formed by in the caldera of Mt. Mazama a volcano that blew its top many, many years ago.
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