High Sierra Topix

Returned recently from spending little over a week on the Big Island of Hawaii . An awesome trip (aside from the airline cancelling our flight home - any guesses on which airline? ), we snorkelled one night with four large Manta Rays , and spent several days exploring Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. The plume of gas coming out of Kilauea was beyond amazing, and watching the lava ooz into the ocean, again, beyond amazing. But the gas from Kilauea was so intense that much of the island was shrouded in 'vog', so its a little funny that I came away from Hawaii with hundreds of pictures, only a small few of the ocean or beach because of the vog.

A few pics:
Moonlight and lava/superheated gas illuminating the gas plume from the Halema'uma'u Crater Vent on Kilauea. The gas coming out of the vent was literally pulsating, and at time could be heard - for scale, the diamter of the vent spewing the gas is 100ft

That same gas plume in the morning, taken near the porch of our hotel


Lava oozing into the ocean near Halapana Gardens...I'll be the first to comment on the poor quality of this image - but the heat waves between myself and the lava made it almost impossible to get a sharp image.

Gecko near our Hotel in Kona
[url=hhttp://www.naturefocused.com/photography/hawaii/gecko.html][/url]
Perhaps more soon

Great pics as usual. Did you go "on your own", or with a tour, or ?? How did you get so close to the lava flowing into the ocean...telephoto lens ?

The Other Tom wrote:Great pics as usual. Did you go "on your own", or with a tour, or ?? How did you get so close to the lava flowing into the ocean...telephoto lens ?

Thanks Tom! Wife and I went and just explored the island. We weren't that close to the lava, probably 1/4 of a mile. We went two consecutive nights to the lava viewing area, the first we saw no lava, second night that thing was gushing. That one photo was taken with a 400mm telephoto - at one point I had put on a 2x and 1.4x extender (eg with my camera crop factor that equated to 1800mm haha! - most of those look really bad) From my understanding, getting close is much easier (and less supervised) from the west through the National Park, rather than the way we went from the east (lava was flowing less than a mile from the end of the road) where it is governed - and governed tightly - by the county. That being said, I wouldn't have wanted to get closer as the rocky and barren field between us and the lava was literally smoking hot.

Very beautiful pictures!
That is one very cute Gecko..love the color of the feets!

The native birds are all so beautiful. I have not yet been to Hawaii looks so lovely

Thank you for sharing

TB, very cool you got to see the lava flows, must have been a little surreal being part of that landscape under the full moon. Great designer gecko, I looked all over the Hilo side for spotted gecko's, just found the stock green ones. Did you get a chance to
see Polulu or Waipio Valley.


http://dmphotography.smugmug.com/

Thanks mit and doug.

mit...those birds are incredibly beautiful...and every one of them an introduced species. When I got home I was quite disappointed that I had all these pictures of these beautiful birds, and none of them (well, almost none) were endemic.

Doug, that moonlight was pretty incredible....when the clouds let up long enough for it to show. We made it to both Waipio and Polulu lookouts (many years back we hiked down to Waipio but didn't do it this time). Waipio was socked in with vog. Polulu was nice - not my favorite photo from the trip, but here's Polulu at sunrise