Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Kalapana Lava Flow

A VERY patient doggie waiting for his mistress to finish her work day. She was one of the park's hires to sit there and count all the visitors coming to see the lava flow which takes place only after 2 p.m. each day and no cars are allowed in after 8 p.m. Please see the previous Kilauea Crater post for the map of this location (Kalapana).

This is what you see long before you arrive to the parking area. It's like a living, breathing creature. VERY Orson-Wellsish if you know what I mean.

An older lava flow. All of the path down to the viewing area consisted of walking over terrain like this.

Look carefully in the left part of this image. You can see the formation of a water spout (twister). These kept occuring continuously. At first, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me.

And here it is. A series of explosions that took place while we were there. It felt a lot like War of the Worlds. It was very quiet except the oohing and aahing of the crowd; no booming sounds of the explosions.

The challenge for me was to keep still while doing rapid fire shots. My tripod was broken. So was my sisters. I was left with having to hand hold my camera in a very dim and changing lighting situation. ISO settings bumped way up. Focus set on manual since the auto feature doesn't know how to track this moving plume of ash and steam.

Hypnotic and mesmerizing. It really was.

Evening is falling and there is almost no daylight left.

As we headed back up to the parking area, you could see the stream of lava glowing as it worked its way down the slope of the mountain. I took this telephoto shot knowing that I would not be able to hold the camera still enough for the length of the time the shutter stays open.

Click here for more information on volcanoes and the ins and outs of lava viewing.

6 comments:

laurel said...

Wow! Looks very exciting to be that close to all that lava. Great pictures of it even without the tripod.

d smith kaich jones said...

OMG! This is incredible! What a cool, cool thing to see. Thanks so much for posting these pictures!

Debi

Leau said...

These are so much fun, like I'm there with you! Thanks for doing this, I'll be gald when you are back! smooches, leau

Gail Garber said...

Wow! Paula, these are incredible photos! I can't believe you captured it all without the tripod.

Anonymous said...

You are a superb photographer. I was searching for info on lava ocean entry when I found your photos. And you live in my neighborhood, i.e., Rio Rancho! Your White Sands pix are magnificent. White Sands was one of my playgrounds when I was a child. A couple years ago I found a very high point in the sands from which to view the surrounding area, particularly the San Andreas Mountains (west). Utterly fantastic!

Paula Scott Molokai Girl Studio said...

Thanks Jim! You can always email me directly:
pmondoy@gmail.com

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