The Terra Galleria Blog – QT Luong

Creating beautiful and meaningful photographs is hard enough, but making a living of them is even harder. For most who manage to do it, there is not a single source of income, but rather a wide variety of income streams that hopefully accumulate to form a large river. Here are what I think are the top ten potential streams of revenue for photographers, in no particular order, since what works for each photographer is different.

Sell prints through art galleries and art fairs. As photography is gaining wide acceptance as an art form, print sales have gone from non-existent to a main source of support for artists in less than half a century. However, who is going to spend three to four figure amounts on a print without seeing it in person first ? Galleries have the reputation, connections and established clientele to sell prints to a sophisticated audience at good prices. Although folks who visit art fairs are generally not willing to pay gallery prices, they are still there specifically to buy art, and come in much larger number than those who stroll into galleries. Combined with the lower barrier to entry, this makes fairs a more lucrative outlet for many photographers.

License images through stock agencies. Images are used everywhere, and the trend is only growing as our culture is very visual. Professional art buyers who are willing to pay proper fees for major uses (eg. global advertising campaigns) go first to a stock agency when they are looking for an image because with millions of images, it is likely than the agency will have what they want. Who has time to scour the web ? In addition, with an agency they are more confident about proper rights clearances (incl. model releases). Agencies have also privileged relationships with big accounts (through volume discounts).

Seek assignments in your area of specialty. Stock is shot on speculation: you put in the money first to produce the shot, and you may or may not recoup it through licensing fees. With assignments, even as you shoot the same subject matter, you are guaranteed a predictable payment as long as you execute the shoot. High profile assignments provide you access that you are unlikely to be granted on your own, as well as high visibility for your work once published.

Provide custom photography. If you cannot find assignments in your area of specialty (maybe because the same subjects are often shot by amateurs), maybe try to cover areas for which new, custom work, is always sought. This includes commercial photography, events, portraits, and wedding. People are always going to get married.

Teach photography. Quite a few fine art photographers hold academic teaching positions, whose reliability gives them the confidence to do personal work. Workshops have been a primary source of income for many nature photographers for ages, but these days, there is more interest in photography as a hobby than ever. At the same time it has created more competition for pros, digital and internet sharing has made photography more fun for amateurs, so the workshop market is only growing.

Speak. As a photographer, you have a unique perspective, and seen more of the world than most. You can talk about your adventures and deliver rich presentations and captivating slide-shows. Your audience goes beyond photographers interested in your techniques and insight, as you kind inspire, inform, and entertain non-photographers as well.

Write. A good accompanying article will help sell your images to a magazine as a package, be it a general interest magazine or a photography magazine – some pay for words, but not images. In the internet age, there are more outlets than ever: third-party blogs, e-books, apps. Writing an old-fashioned book still helps establish you as an authority.

Provide consulting and services. You have acquired very specific technical and business skills in the course of operating your business. I have seen photographers and “creative consultants” charge as much as some attorneys. Tasks range from setting up a printer, optimizing a computer for photoshop, to editing photos, negotiating a license or determining a strategy for selling prints. The easiest way to make money in photography has always been to sell your camera, but you can actually keep it and instead offer new equipment for resale if you’ve developed a following. Don’t let this studio, large format printer, high-end scanner, profile make, or computerized mat cutter sit idle. You can recoup its cost, and maybe beyond, by letting others use them or putting them to use for others.

Seek sponsorships. Even if you are not famous enough to license your name (like for instance Galen Rowell did for Singh-Ray filters), you can still get free equipment and maybe some money for your projects in exchange for an endorsement. Besides the financial benefit, your name will get more exposure as it is featured by the endorsed company in their promotional materials. If you have enough followers, even mere affiliate programs could be lucrative.

Did I forget anything ? Be sure to check the next post in this series for my twist.

Part 4 of 6:

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

The Heleakala summit, at more than 10,000 feet high, is above the inversion layer separating lower maritime air from upper atmospheric air. On my previous visit to the crater, I always found myself above the clouds, in clear air.

Last May, I arrived in Maui as storms were moving in and out. There were unusual high-altitude clouds as well. This created some of the most dynamic cloudscapes that I’ve ever seeen. It was fascinating watching the changing light on clouds below and above.

One minute, you wouldn’t see anything from the crater rim, the next, a hole in the clouds would reveal part of the crater as if it just had been created.

At one point, an opening between the low altitude clouds and the high altitude clouds was large enough to see the summit of Mauna Kea, which lies on the Big Island of Hawaii.

More images of Haleakala clouds
More images of Haleakala National Park

Treasured Lands, the exhibition of my 58 images of the National Parks at the National Heritage Museum (Lexington MA) initially scheduled to close in Fall 2010, then Spring 2011, has been extended a second time, until Sept 10, 2011.

I will deliver another lecture on that closing day at 2pm (museum website). As the 2010 lecture was to a filled-up room, I have been told that the upcoming lecture will take place in the larger Maxwell Auditorium. I will also be signing copies of my recently released Yosemite book. Please be sure to introduce yourself if you attend, it would be a pleasure to meet you.

I’d like to thank Seth Kugel for mentioning the exhibit (“Mr. Luong’s large-format camera creates images of beaches and glaciers and deserts and waterfalls from American Samoa to Maine that were so astonishingly sharp and mesmerizing that my father was convinced there was some special 3-D technology involved. There’s not: they’re just awesome photos.”) in the Frugal Traveler column of the New York Times.

For the record, I must make a correction to Jody Feinberg’s Patriot Ledger review (which has since been repeated in several different sources). I am not the first to have photographed all the National Parks. This would have to be, without any doubt, Henry William Jackson, who was the first to photograph Yellowstone, which for a while was the only National Park. In 1941, when there were 25 National Parks (see list of National Parks by date of designation), Ansel Adams came very close to photographing all of them – partly on a Guggenheim fellowship, how times change ! – but he missed Everglades. Stan Jorstad photographed all of them when there were 55 of them. My claim is just to be the first to photograph 58 National Parks in large format. As far as I know, nobody else has done it since. Given the declining popularity of film, there is a possibility this won’t be done again, but one never knows.

My goal for Treasured Lands is to make it a traveling exhibit. Please feel free to suggest venues. In the while, I have created a Treasured Lands webpage where you can see the all of exhibition’s images and text on a single page. This could take some time to load on a slower internet connection.

The three first hikes in this series may have given the impression that to see something out of the beaten path in Yosemite, you need to venture out of established trails, on exposed or strenuous paths. This could well be true of Yosemite Valley, so unique and so full of landmarks such as Yosemite Falls and Half Dome that it is easy to forget that it occupies a mere 7 square miles. Its small area and steep walls limit the number of trails. However, the greater Yosemite National Park stretches over 1,200 square miles. Only 5% of visitors venture outside of Yosemite Valley. Be amongst them, and you will discover relatively little known sights even along a well-established and easy trail such as the one I’ll describe in this post.

Natural sandstones arches are relatively common (Arches National Park alone features more than 2000 of them), but granite arches are much more rare. There is only one such known arch in the whole Sierra Nevada, and although it is situated right in Yosemite, most have not heard of it.

The Indian Rock Arch is reached from a short spur trail branching out of the Porcupine Creek to North Dome trail. The whole trail is about 10 miles RT with modest elevation differences, easy to follow and shaded, except for the final section when you drop down to North Dome. You will not be alone, however the trail is much, much less crowded than those found in the Valley.

When you get out of the forest, near the rim, you get a wide and unusual view of the Valley. The vertical Half-Dome face is right in front of you, and contrasts with the rounded top of North Dome.

Drive to the Porcupine Flat trailhead on Tioga Pass Road (so accessible only in summer and fall), about a mile east of the Porcupine Flat campground, marked by a small parking area and an outhouse on the south side of the road.

From there, starting at about 8,100 feet, you will loose 300 feet of elevation over 1.5 miles and gain it back as you reach a pass at the top of the Indian Ridge at mile 3.5. You will see a sign pointing to Indian Rock, which is about a steep third of a mile north.

After that junction, the trees clear soon, and you come in view of North Dome. The descend to North Dome is rather steep, crossing granite slabs and loosing about 600 feet, but reaching the top of North Dome rewards you with 360 degree views.

For photography, the best conditions are in late afternoon to sunset. There are dwarfed junipers on North Dome that would make for a nice foreground to a sunset Half-Dome shot – for which I’ll have to return one day. During my visit, instead of staying at North Dome for sunset, I went back to Indian Rock Arch. The west side of the arch, as seen in the first image is its more interesting, as you can get high enough to see Half-Dome through the opening (but please don’t step of the arch, as it looks quite fragile !). That side is well lit at sunset. From the other side of the arch, you are looking up, which I used to my advantage for the night shot. Capturing both images required an extremely wide angle lens. I very seldom use or even carry my 15mm fisheye, but I was glad that, anticipating a tight space, I brought it that day.

More images of North Dome and Indian Arch.

Part 4 of 6: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

Check out my book: Spectacular Yosemite

For a reaction to the October presentation of the actual camera please scroll down.

Last week’s news has been the announcement by Lytro of the upcoming launch (later this year) of the first light field camera. I normally don’t write about new technological developments, but this one has the potential to alter photography as we know it. As a former award-winning imaging researcher turned full-time photographer, I couldn’t resist commenting. Please correct me if I got anything wrong.

The light field is a fundamental concept in imaging. It describes the amount of light traveling in every direction through every point in space. Whereas conventional camera sensors record only the sum of the color/intensity of rays of light falling on the sensor at each focal plane point (2D) a light field camera captures the color/intensity and direction of the rays of light (2D) falling on the sensor at each focal plane point (2D) – the “focal plane light field”, a 4D subset of the global light field. The additional information makes it possible to create images in a way which was not possible with existing cameras. In particular, Lytro emphasizes the ability to set up focus point as desired from light field files after the shot, much the same way you can set white balance and exposure (within a certain range) after the shot with RAW files.

While the light field concept has been known for a while (its name was coined in 1936) it was not until the mid 90s that it became extensively used in computer graphics, a subfield of computer science concerned with generating realistic images – for instance photographic images from light fields. The main practical limitation was that capturing the light field required cumbersome, specialized devices, such as the goniometer and multi-camera array from Stanford. This changed with the graduate work of Ren Ng, Lytro’s founder: in his PhD thesis of 2006, he demonstrated light field capture using a microlens array between the sensor and main lens of an off-the shelf (medium format) DSLR.

Having seen less than a decade ago the previously mentioned room-sized devices, I am amazed that Lytro is set to release a compact light-field camera this year. This is an incredible technical achievement. However I note that the US press that has amplified Lytro’s press release last week has largely ignored the fact that there are already working light field cameras on the market, offered by Raytrix, a smaller company also founded by imaging researchers – they can even transform any digital camera into a light field camera by making a custom microlens array. I guess a German company targeting the industrial, scientific, and entertainment markets (with the high product prices to boot) doesn’t make as good a story as a Silicon Valley start-up with $50 million in venture capital funding, whose product is squarely aimed at the consumer.

Unfortunately, looking at the description of the camera benefits, it seems that Lytro has erred a bit too much on the consumer side. In order to appear more simple, they did not emphasize the full potential of the technology. Their three selling points “No fuss focus, Speed, Travel light” are aimed primarily at point-and-shooters. This could be based on market research concluding that the main user complaint about point and shoot cameras is shutter lag caused by autofocus. However, aren’t cell-phone cameras light, and simple enough ? They have huge Depth of Field (DoF) which makes precise focus a non-issue, particularly when the intended use of images (social sharing via low-res electronic use or 4×6 prints) doesn’t require high resolution. Moreover, point-and-shooters rarely want to post-process their pictures on the computer. They certainly didn’t want to mess with color balance and RAW files, so what is the chance they’ll enjoy dealing with light field files and setting focus ?

Lytro thinks that there will be a “magic” to be shared with living pictures with which you can play, but while this is cool the first few times, it is so only superficially. I am not sure of lasting interest for a technology that requires a specialized plug-in or app, even if that app is built into social media sites so that you don’t have to install anything. And isn’t a video more “living” anyway ? Capturing life as a still image eventually is an artistic skill. Thinking that a technology, as advanced as it is, can provide a magic bullet for it will only lead to disappointment. Thinking that because of camera can “unleash” the light, you do need to understand and master all its variations will result in flat photographs, no matter what you do with with the light field, regardless of whether you focus the camera or not.

If you look carefully at the images provided in the Lytro demo, you’ll will notice that they have been selected to have a wide depth (kind of like the images that you see in 3D demos), with a foreground very close to the camera. Most of images that people take aren’t like that. Even the relatively large aperture of the Lytro camera would render those images as all in focus, therefore negating the effect. Because the Lytro camera captures the focal plane light field (instead of the full light field), it can create a synthetically generated narrower aperture, but not a wider one. Therefore, the Lytro camera will not allow you to get shallower DoF effects. There is already a free iOS App for that, SynthCam, written by no less than Prof. Marc Lavoy, who was one of Ng’s advisors.

Besides requiring a static subject, the main drawback of SynthCam is resolution – it is video-based. Although the Lytro camera has not yet been released, I guess that resolution could be a problem there too: the Lytro demo offers a zoom button, but when using it, you can notice that there isn’t much more additional detail. In Ng’s thesis, a medium-format camera was used. However, the microlens array of 292×292 effectively reduced the resolution to 0.1 MP (!) because each sampled vector direction needed an additional sensor section. It will be interesting to see what tricks Lytro has come up with to improve on those dismal numbers. Those micro lenses/prisms are not very efficient compared to camera arrays, wasting a lot of image data. By comparison, the Raytrix cameras offer a much efficient effective resolution of 1/4 of the original, at the cost of favoring a focusing distance, while the Lytro camera is focus-free. The dual aspect of resolution is high ISO sensitivity. If the pixels need to be made smaller to be able to sample enough directions, they will be more affected by noise. Will the loss be offset by the ability of the camera to shoot wide open ? So far Lytro has not announced any ISO numbers.

This could be a reason why the current offering is targeted at point and shooters. In the future, this may be less of a limitation. Higher resolution sensors are already possible, but manufacturers have backed from them because with current cameras there is little benefit. I am sure sensor manufacturers will be thrilled to have a new market that justifies absurdly-sounding higher MP counts.

To take a longer perspective, I do not think that the point and shoot market is the best prospect for light-field photography. This is advanced stuff, of interest to advanced shooters, aware of the nuts and bolts of photography, of shutter speeds and DoF, who appreciate that the shot is taken wide open, but the resulting images can have the DoF of a lens stopped way down. If/when the technology yields cameras with sufficient resolution for serious use at a competitive price point, I could see it embraced by professionals needing to capture a fast-paced moment which will not be repeated – sports photographers, photojournalists, wedding photographers, wildlife and underwater photographers. I could see it used by some landscape and close-ups photographers who want to maintain both a large DoF and fast shutter speed.

However, the greatest potential for light field photography will be realized by software tools that enable creative manipulation of the light field data. Once in the hands of artists, this will be a revolutionary technology.

One obvious photographic application is creative use of blur, focus, and DoF in ways that were not possible before. View camera and tilt-(shift) lenses made it possible to focus on a plane not parallel to the focal plane to create images with either apparent extended DoF – or much narrower DoF than normal, leading to the “miniature world” effect. Light field images would let you exert total control over focus and blur wherever you want, with a “focus brush”. You wouldn’t be limited to a plane anymore. You could have several people at different distances, all sharp, and a blurred background. You could have a all parts of a close 3D object (such as a flower) all in focus, and a blurred background. It could start as a simple interface that let you click two points – like in the Canon DoF mode – and have everything in-between sharp. Eventually, your imagination would be the only limit.

Light field images, contain information from multiple viewpoints. While the full light filed would let you generate virtual perspectives from any viewpoint in the scene, the partial light field captured by the Lytro camera allows only for a slight perspective change. However, this is enough for changing perspective by moving a virtual camera in close-up photography, and producing 3D from a single lens capture. You could shoot from behind a chain link fence or a net, and remove the obstruction, by interpolating from the multiple viewpoints.

I think you’ll agree with me that this is more interesting than just a fast, light camera with no focusing fuss.

UPDATE Oct 24, 2011

Lytro unveiled the actual camera a few days ago. I still stand by the above, but let me add a few remarks:

1. The images are indeed low-resolution. I find it telling that the company totally declines to provide a resolution number, instead listing “11 MegaRays” (what is it ? nobody knows), as this is a number which would look OK if it was megapixels. In the interview with Robert Scobble, Ren Ng dodged twice the resolution question. He mentions “HD resolution” – which would be at most 1080×1080 since the image is square (some consider 720 to be HD, though) not 1080×1920, but then uses the term “rendered” which makes me wonder what the native resolution would be. Ren stated that resolution is not important, and I agree insofar as this product is positioned.

2. The camera is about as interesting for serious photographers as the sub-megapixel digital cameras of the 1990s. In fact, that demographic likes their DSLR to be bigger and complex, and their skills to be noted, just the opposite of what the technology currently promises. There is not a single professional use I can think of – besides taking commissioned pictures to demonstrate the concept.

3. The camera is less practical (one more item to carry around, no large playback screen, no built-in cell/wifi communication for instant sharing) more expensive, and more limited than cell-phone cameras (no flash, video, cool photo apps), reducing its general public appeal.

4. The emphasis is on the “cool” effect and the “user experience” for everybody – or more precisely gadget lovers – rather than for photographers. Many tricks from the Apple playbook are used: the unconventional (and possibly ergonomically dubious) design which doesn’t look like any other camera, the minimalistic design, the reliance on company-hosted servers providing the controlled universe in which the “user experience” can be shared. In fact, at the moment the Windows version of the software is still in the works.

5. From a creative point of view, Lytro is betting on the “living picture” idea (presenting a web image that can be refocused by the user) rather on providing tools to control DOF. The effect is cool when first seen, but can it sustain a new esthetic ? Such an esthetic would invite users to deliberately seek images with much more depth and close objects than usual, and tell stories by letting the viewer discover picture elements by focusing. While I could see a few neat projects done by following this paradigm, the problem is that in great projects the idea comes first, and then the tool is chosen to match the idea, not the opposite.

6. This is a first generation product. It is positioned the way it is, because that’s the most exciting application of existing sensor technology. Excitement is what a start-up needs to generate. Regardless of how limited it may appear to be, it’s still remarkable that the first commercial iteration of a technology this innovative can be put into such a neat package and sold for such a reasonable price. Let see what happens when electronics will have progressed enough, for the camera to capture enough resolution.

It is often said that a photographer with great work but no promotional plan will make less money than a photographer with average work and great promotion. So if you are trying to make a living in photography, promotion should be a priority.

Here are ten ideas to promote your photography which have worked well for others:

• Submit to publishers. Do you think they are going to find you by chance ? Send unsolicited as well as list-based submissions of your best work to newspapers, magazines, calendar, greeting card companies, and anybody you’d like to publish your work.
• Mail promo pieces and newsletters Your prospective clients need to be reminded that you exist. Use both regular mail (more attention-catching if well designed) and email (less expensive so you can send more).
• Follow-up with calls and visits to show your portfolio. Personal contacts cannot be replaced, as personality is key to many hiring decisions. The portfolio is the key to show your vision as a photographer and prove that you can deliver the goods.
• Attend portfolio reviews. At those events, you will be able to show your portfolio and get feedback from several dozen people of influence in the fine-art or commercial world within a couple of days. There is a fee, but it would take you much more time to be able to see as many people outside – assuming you have access to them.
• Network. All of this still does not replace personal recommendations, which is how most jobs are landed.
• Get an agent. Agents have the industry knowledge, connections, and trust of art buyers. They can get you jobs that you’d never land by yourself and help with negotiation of terms.
• Appear at events. Many venues are interested in hearing about your photography: camera clubs (particularly good if you are doing workshops), industry conferences, but also more mainstream media related to your photographic specialties. They may not pay you, however that’s a good opportunity to get your name out there and establish yourself as an authority in your field.
• Purchase advertising. This is how almost all companies get their name out there, so why would you be an exception ? These days advertising does not necessarily means magazine ads or sourcebooks, but is shifting to sponsored links on webpages and search engine results – the only way for most to guarantee top-page placement.
• Enter photo contests. Won’t it be great to be able to call yourself an “award winning photographer” ? Some contests even provide opportunities for additional exposure. For instance, an honorable mention in one of the categories of Nature Best guarantees inclusion in a (group) exhibit in the Smithsonian. The “most awarded photographer in history” didn’t miss the opportunity to headline his website with “Mr Lik goes to Washington”.
• Post images on photo sharing sites. Their feedback mechanisms, large user base (Flickr’s more than 40 million accounts in 2010), provide you with a tremendous amount of views and peer recognition if your images rise to the top of the rankings.

I did none of this.

Yet, I’ve sold or licensed images to a few small clients in more than thirty countries. Publications as diverse as National Geographic Explorer, Parks Magazine, and the Boston Globe (among many others) have written articles about my work – which by the way, is quite a bit more than them “featuring” an image. During my last visit to Haleakala National Parks, rangers at two sites recognized me.

What does it mean for you – besides the fact that you may be interested in following this series to see what I did 🙂 ? Be aware of what others have done, study and understand what has worked and what didn’t for them, but don’t automatically try to copy their efforts. Your photography is what it is because you are unique. So should be your promotional efforts. In the future, to succeed in the business of photography, you will have to be as creative in your promotional efforts as you are in your photography.

Part 3 of 6: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

After the Green Sand Beach and Waipio Valley, the Mauna Kea Summit was my third destination on the Big Island that required 4WD, because of a steep, unpaved road.

When I arrived at the visitor center, at 9,000 feet, I was still trying to dry up my clothes, drenched while working in the rainforest of Hawaii Volcanoes NP. As I was told that the summit has been in the clouds all day, in order to acclimatize, I took a nap in my car, and then decided to drive up anyways.

Just half an hour before sunset, as I reached the paved section of the road, near the summit (13,796 ft). the clouds began to clear.

The recent storms had dumped snow on the summit, in Hawaii, and in May !

It was well below freezing as I rushed to capture the last light.

Speaking with a ranger and an astronomer, I was told that I was welcome to hang out there, since they wouldn’t start experiments until much later because of the residual humidity, but I should watch out for altitude sickness.

After every 15 minutes of photography, I had to retreat into the car to warm up. I liked the connection that the telescopes (part of the largest such complex in the world) provided between earth and sky.

More images of Mauna Kea

Vote ! (link provided for RRS users)

For a change from working in the rain in Hawaii Volcanoes NP, I drove to South Point, the southern tip of the island of Hawaii.

The access to Papakolea Beach consisted of a maze of badly rutted vehicle tracks, along the coast, alternatively sandy and rocky. A four wheel drive was definitively necessary. Hiking would have been 6mi round-trip with no shade.

Papakolea Bay is a collapsed cinder cone. Olivine crystals within the cone give the beach its green color. There are only two such beaches in the US (the other is in Guam).

I tried different exposure times. The two images above were shot with just a polarizing filter, resulting in fast exposure times (1/125s and 1/50s respectively).

To better capture the surf movement, I added a 1.2 (4 stop) neutral density filter, exposure time 0.5s.

The 10 f-stop “big stopper” neutral density filter from Lee rendered the water as a dreamy blur in an exposure time of 25s.

I then went to the southernmost point in the United States.

There was not even a marker, only a light and the ruins of an ancient Hawaiian temple.

More images of Hawaii South Point.

The Hawaiian islands are further away from a major land mass than any other in the world. Over the span of about 70 million years, plants and animals managed to make the voyage to the once barren islands and to colonize it, at the rate of one every 70000 years, and then evolving into more specialized life forms. Over 80 percent of Hawaii’s native flora and fauna is not found anywhere else on earth.

During my previous visits to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, I spent most of my time on the lava fields. Since lava was not flowing this time, and since it rained for most of my visit, this was the perfect time to concentrate more on the vegetation of the park.

I was particularly drawn to the Hapuu, a giant tree-fern which reaches great heights, but starts as a curious small curled-up fiddlehead. After making photographs of the fiddlehead as part of its environment (above), I wanted to isolate it more. Here is how I shot the seemingly straightforward images below.

I carefully (with a half-inch precision) positioned the camera to avoid overlap between the fiddlehead and the ferns in the background. Using a narrow depth of field also helped, but I didn’t want to blur the background to the point it disappeared, as I still wanted to provide a context for the main subject. On that overcast day the similar brightness of the main subject and of the background did not let the subject “pop”. The “artificial sun” came to the rescue to change that brightness ratio. I set up the ambient exposure so that the background would be under-exposed by about two f-stops. Using flash exposure compensation, I then set up the flash so that the fiddlehead would be properly exposed. With a wireless remote transmitter, I moved the flash off camera so the light would not be frontal, resulting in better texture, and also shot it through some ferns to create a less uniform, more natural illumination. I tried a few different variations in framing.

See more images of rainforest in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

Halemaumau crater – home to Pele, Goddess of Hawaiian Volcanoes according to the traditions of Hawaiian mythology – is a pit crater located within the larger summit caldera of Kīlauea in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. During my previous two visits to the Park, a decade ago, Halemaumau crater was inactive. I remember standing at the Halemaumau overlook and staring at the former lava lake at its bottom, thinking how cool it would have been to see it while it was an active lava lake.

The only constant of the Kilauea eruption is the change. Three years ago, in 2008, a series of explosive eruptions awakened the Halemaumau crater. Because of the dangers presented by sulfur dioxide gas emissions, the National Park Service has closed the whole area, including the Halemaumau overlook, and Crater Rim Drive between the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and Chain of Craters Road. This means that you cannot see the lava lake. You get just a distant view of the venting gas plume.

This winter, my parents-in-law visited the Park. They reported that there wasn’t much to see. Indeed, by day, the plume just looks like some smoke. However, I was hoping that at night, molten lava residing at shallow depth within the vent would create a spectacular incandescent illumination that I envisioned against the starry night sky. During my last visit to the Hawaiian Islands this May, no surface lava was flowing at all on the whole Big Island. However, I thought that a chance to actually create the image of the plume that I had in my mind would be worth the flight from Kauai. I couldn’t envision that image a decade ago, since, besides the lack of activity at Halemaumau, film cameras did not have enough sensitivity.

When I first arrived at the Volcano Observatory at 7pm, driving straight from Hilo, I was still dressed in shorts and T-shirt. Upon getting out the car, I felt frozen by the combination of temperature, wind, and humidity. At a modest 4000 feet in Hawaii ! However, I was so excited about the glow being present. In a subsequent conversation with the great Hawaiian volcano photographer Bryan Lowry, I learned it had been there only for a couple of weeks. Despite bad weather following me for my last five trips, I sometimes get lucky !

I returned on three different nights to photograph the images below, with a 24mm/f1.4 L II lens on the Canon 5D mk2. The wide aperture of this lens (that I shoot almost always at f1.4 or f2.0) makes it possible to maintain a shutter speed below 30s (to prevent star trailing) and an ISO of 1600 or lower (to prevent excessive image noise). After making the first 4 images, I was still missing the Milky Way. To capture the fifth image, I set up an intervalometer at about 10.30pm on the last night to take images automatically through the night. Although it was cold and raining, the experience of the previous days had told me that the local weather could change at any time. I punched a hole in a plastic bag for the lens, wrapped it around the camera, and secured it with tape before going to sleep. In the morning, I was delighted to find out that the sky did clear out for about half an hour, around 2am, revealing for a brief moment a beautiful Milky Way above the volcano. Pre-visualization paid again! Which image do you prefer?

Update March 2018: As we mark the 10th anniversary of Kīlauea’s summit eruption, that image has now because quite common, so to understand my excitement, keep in mind that back in 2011, it was one of the first times it had been captured. Also, since then, the lava level has risen quite a bit, and lava fountains are occasionally visible, but back then that wasn’t the case.

More images of Halemaumau Crater
More images of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park