Lava Landscape

The best time to see (and shoot) lava, at least in my humble opinion, is before sunrise or after sunset.  There’s a magic window right when it first starts getting light in the morning, or right as it’s about to turn completely dark in the evening, when the lava has an other-worldly glow, and you can still pick up detail in the foreground and in the sky…and in this case, in the ocean.

If you try to shoot in complete darkness, you can get pretty lava, but nothing else.  The lava is so bright that the rock and sky around it come out completely black and detail-less.  And if you shoot in daylight, the lava looks completely washed out.  In the above image, all but the biggest pretty orange bits scattered amid the black basalt would completely disappear.

It’s worth noting that in the tropics, twilight is brief year round.  The latitude on The Big Island is approximately 19 degrees North.  The vibrant sunsets that Hawai’i is famous for last but a few brief minutes, and darkness falls quickly.  Likewise, the optimal window for shooting lava, I found, is also extremely brief.  Depending on cloud cover, it can be less than five minutes!

This endeavor involves planning ahead, but I’m sure you’ve heard the saying that “luck favors the prepared.”  If you want to shoot lava at dawn (my preference) at its current location (subject to change without warning!) you are either getting on a boat at 4:30 AM or beginning your hike by 4:00 AM.  And yes, I did both.  That was in order to get out to the flow by 5:45, in total darkness, because sunrise was at 6:45.

If you haven’t learned to set up your camera gear in the dark by now, this isn’t the time.  Practice beforehand.  Whether you’re pitching and rolling on a boat, or stumbling around an uneven lava field filled with deep cracks and razor-sharp rocks, it isn’t the time to drop a lens cap, let alone a lens or camera.

With a little planning, you can go out and get some really cool images…or should I say hot?