At the end of my work travel/summer vacation mid September I found that my travel schedule back to the U.S. required a stopover in Iceland. As things developed, my one flightless day became two when my original flight to Iceland was canceled/shifted a day early on very short notice. I had already booked a tour with volcano hike for the one day in the somewhat slim hope there would still be activity in the volcano, and decided to also use the evening on the extra first day for another volcano hike. That was a lucky choice as it was later reported that the pulsating activity of the volcano had resumed 1 hour before the start time (5 PM) of my first tour after being very sporadic for 10 days, and the nighttime view with the glowing lava was much nicer than than during the later mid-day hike. Further, the day after I left Iceland a surge in the lava flow over-run one of the hiking paths causing the need for some evacuations by rescue services, and the whole area was closed for tourists for the first day. The overrun path was permanently closed. Then less than a week later (September 18) the activity pretty much completely died and has not resumed since,
https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/nature_and_travel/2021/10/25/eruption_about_to_expire/.
As there have been so many fantastic photos published of the eruption from drones and otherwise, and since the rim of the crater no longer offered a direct view into the cater as in the beginning, my expectations were pretty low for the photography. I was mostly there for the experience and some nice hikes. I used a combination of D500, AW1 and my Pixel 3 cell phone for the captures.
There was about a 1 hour hike up the best view of the volcano with the first well fit group. The path was well established up the steep hills but then became rougher and vanished once the terrain flattened out.
#1
The size of the lava fields were quite impressive
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Then at destination, an the enormous lava field was spead out in all directions, with lava gloving everywhere and sprouts of lava here and there.
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At regular intervals the glow from the volcano itself ramped up and if one were lucky one could capture some quick sprouts of lava from the volcano itself.
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Telephoto optics was heavily affected by heat waves from the hot lava.
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It was hard to not blow out the glowing lava in the dark. The stitched cell phone image (#8) failed miserably at it with no adjustment possible, but even when underexposing heavily with D500 it was hard if any of the surrounding terrain was to be shown.
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The hike back in the dark was "interesting" over the rough terrain as the handed out head lamps were quite inadequate. I was happy I brought my own, others used their cell phones. But it was a quite memorable hike I will remember for a long time after the fantastic experience up a the glowing lava field that cannot fully be illustrated by the photos.
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