How do you capture an erupting volcano?

By Whitney Johnson, Director of Visual and Immersive Experiences

Horror. Fascination. Tourist attraction. Potential death trap.

“It’s truly mesmerizing,” says photographer Chris Burkard, who has taken these images of a slow-moving volcanic eruption in southwestern Iceland. How does he do it? First, he learned his best images came from the two hours a day of “epic light” around dawn or dusk. In the image above, the lava flow, descending in a river of patterns and shapes upon the landscape, enhances the evening glow.

The rugged beauty of the landscape contrasts with knowledge that “those things could be destroyed at the moment’s notice,” Chris told me yesterday. He’s taking a few precautions: He wears a sturdy mask and has a gas alarm to warn him if the wind shifts or dies, spiking the intensity of poisonous gas.

From the air: On Chris’s first day at the volcano, he captured the view from above. “From the air, you can feel the heat rise up and hit you almost instantly. It’s palpable and creates near-tropical conditions as the warm air contrasts with the cold wet air off the ocean.”

The spectacle: On some days, more than 10,000 people have flocked to witness the Fagradalsfjall volcano. “Even during a year with limited travel and relatively no outside tourism to impact it yet, it has drawn human interest on a scale we are only able to fully grasp from the sky.”

The surreal lava: Chris said he needed to be on the ground to move slowly and explore the freshly cooled rock along the base of the flow. “The shapes, textures, and cooling patterns create a million different ways to photograph this new earth being formed. Even the color of the rock can change pending the air temp, sun exposure, and cooling time,” he says. Some of the new rock lasts only hours before a new surge of magma and lava push through it. Pictured above, standing guard, is a member of the nation’s prestigious (and volunteer) search-and-rescue teams.

Leave no one behind: The safety volunteers, protecting all from the volcano and the wildly changing elements, had to shut down the site on Tuesday evening because of dangerous gas levels and low wind. In the distance, two search-and-rescue workers monitored the area for remaining people. During this eruption, the southwestern strip of Iceland’s first volcanic activity in eight centuries, the volunteers are on site 24 hours a day. While Fagradalsfjall may fizzle out in a few weeks, “this modest eruption could mark the beginning of something bigger,” Robin George Andrews writes for Nat Geo.

Look for more from Chris and Nat Geo on this volcano in coming days, including on our new TikTok channel.

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THE BIG TAKEAWAY

Stepping up: Canadian videographer and guide Mario Cyr had accompanied Nat Geo photographer Jen Hayes in years past to document the struggles of baby harp seals in eastern Canada. They need to live on sea ice while very young, but the sea ice is melting. This year was among the sparsest in recent memory for sea ice—and one of the worst for the seal pups. COVID-19 restrictions prevented Jen from entering Canada, so Nat Geo contracted Mario to photograph the seals’ plight. (At left, a thin pup on a beach suckles its flipper. Many pups on shore have been separated from their mothers—and vulnerable to predators such as coyotes; at right, a storm last year broke up newly formed ice, complicating the crossing of a young harp seal.)

SEE THE SEALS 

TODAY IN A MINUTE

Freed: AP photographer and reporter Thein Zaw. He had been jailed for 26 days in Myanmar for covering a protest against the army’s overthrow of a widely popular government. Thein Zaw had been arrested after photographing police, some of them armed, charging anti-coup protesters. He was just doing his job, said a judge who dismissed all charges. Dozens more journalists remain jailed, the AP reports.

Preserved: A fire ripped through a museum in New York’s Chinatown last year, but an invaluable collection of images and artifacts of generations of Chinese Americans survived. “Somewhat miraculously, the bulk of the collection could be restored and saved,” Hua Hsu writes for Aperture. Among the Museum of Chinese in America’s collection: An image of Stephen Cheng, an idealistic 1960s and ’70s singer who sought to connect the United States and China through a fusion of jazz, rock, and Chinese traditional music.

For sale: A rare collection of photographs from the 1800s is going on auction next month. Among those are a cache of images dating to the 1840s by pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot, the photography site PetaPixel reports. See the photos.

INSTAGRAM OF THE DAY

Shutterbugs: What are those things crawling on Thomas Peschak? The photographer and Nat Geo Explorer was beset with creepy, crawly armored katydids while in the Kalahari desert on assignment. He says the katydid population has exploded with double the annual rainfall in just the last few months. “Anything left on the ground from bags to cameras is quickly overwhelmed by these opportunists,” Tom tells us. “They also ended up in my beard and on my head ... and yes I kept smiling and laughing.” More than 1.4 million people have liked the video since it went up on our Instagram page last week.

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On Monday, Debra Adams Simmons covers the latest in history. If you’re not a subscriber, sign up here to also get Victoria Jaggard on science, George Stone on travel, and Rachael Bale on animal and wildlife news.

THE LAST GLIMPSE

Bridging societies: Relations between the United States and China have ebbed and flowed, but Michael Yamashita has sought to humanize the cultures in a quarter-century for Nat Geo. This image, showing workers loading a brick kiln, was made on assignment for a 2013 Nat Geo story. Michael’s 11th feature on China documented life along the Grand Canal connecting Beijing and Hangzhou. Most of the canal, built in the 7th century, is still in operation and is still an economic artery, says Sara Manco, senior photo archivist for the National Geographic Society.

Essay: Navigating the Asian American experience amid rising racism at home