iceland and eyjafjallajökull volcano _DSC5087

Shortly before sunset the lava being ejected from the volcano was leaving these trails

of ash - and rising roughly 500 meters before starting to fall.

Wow. I rarely rate or critique photos in the Nature category, and this one just happened to be the first I saw via the dreaded anonymous Rate Photos queue. I don't normally rate or critique photos outside my personal areas of interest, but this one to me is the very definition of "original". It's certainly something I don't personally see very often. Not the most aesthetically appealing of the variations in your folder, so 7/5. But I'm glad I stumbled across this en route to something else.

No sweat - I didn't submit this for critique thinking it was "beautiful" per se, just that it was spectacular in the raw power that it documents. These volcano shots are really just documentary; we've all seen long exposures of flying lava before. But there's enough interest in the unpronounceable volcano that I thought I'd share what I'd seen and used the "critique" request as one way to get them looked at.

Soon I'll be making the same comments about my Greenland dogsled expedition photos. It's more nature photojournalism than art.

Right, right, those photos of long exposure lava flows and those gorgeous red showers of sparks against a nighttime backdrop are easy to like in terms of simple aesthetics. But I've seen those before.

 

What appeals to me about this one is the raw power. So while on the one hand the tight framing and muted palette make it tough to compete with other photos in terms of being picturesque, on the other hand the tight framing gives this photo a sense of bursting at the seams. And the debris shooting straight up, not arcing downward toward earth... it's akin to an uncomfortably tight closeup of the face of barely contained rage.  It gives the sense of being dangerously close (how close were you, by the way?).

 

I haven't seen many photos quite like it, while the other photos of this event in your portfolio do seem a bit more familiar. Nothing at all wrong with them, they're still world class level in terms of photojournalism or documentary photography. But this one has some real punch to it. Not sure how many other viewers would see it that way, tho'.

I agree whole-heartedly.  I think Lex summed it up very well regarding the framing.  The photograph does an excellent job of conveying the power and raw ferocity of planet Earth.  You have documented house-sized chunks of melted rock being jettisoned from the mouth of a volcano... how could I not be in awe.  A shot that might have otherwise been a scenic Icelandic landscape has been violently interrupted.

 

I have photographs that I obsessed over perfect aesthetics but I've also taken photographs where aesthetics were never even considered.  Where the object was to convey an emotion that had nothing at all to do with how perfectly I exposed or composed.

Really Art + Documentary capture.

Week ago i did extended search just to find such clear photo for this erupted volcano and i didn't found such great one like this. Thank you for sharing.