Spirit of Kīlauea: The Story Behind the Image

Every photographer has one image that haunts them. Mine was born the day I learned that white tropicbirds glide around Kīlauea's eruptions. I couldn't stop picturing it: fire and grace in a single frame, a pure white bird crossing a sky of lava. Some images you can let go of. This one I had to capture for myself.

Kīlauea had been erupting for just under seven months, in episodes, each one building like a held breath before letting go. When the forecasts called for episode 29 inside a seven day window, I didn't hesitate. I booked my flight to Hawaiʻi and came a few days early to explore the island and do some diving and underwater photography before heading up to the volcano. Then, as the window opened, I made my way to Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park, ready for it to make its move.

The forecasted day arrived. Nothing. That's nature. She doesn't run on our schedule, and she doesn't owe anybody a show. So it has to be tomorrow, right? Wrong. Day after day I camped on the edge of that volcano, living out of the back of my Jeep in the lot beside the trail to the caldera, gear packed and ready to move at a moment's notice.

Locked and loaded on the crater's edge

Real sleep was out of the question. Every day the tiltmeter readings climbed, the summit inflating as pressure built inside the volcano, and my anticipation climbed right along with it. I set alarms and napped in thirty minute stretches, waking through the night to refresh the webcams and search for a glow. It was cold. It was brutal. And in those long hours the doubt crept in. What if this takes another week? A month? How much longer could I realistically hold out? Every night I asked myself the same question, and every night the answer came back the same. One more night.

Always one more night.

On watch at the caldera, waiting for Kīlauea to move

At 4:15 on what had to be my final morning, I opened my eyes, refreshed the webcam half asleep, and my heart stopped. The crater was glowing.

I was out of that Jeep in seconds, gear over my shoulder, moving fast up the trail in the dark. And with every step the glow ahead of me grew until it wasn't a glow anymore. It swallowed the entire sky. It swallowed everything. The world just went red.

Then there I was, standing at the edge of the world, watching the raw power of the planet unleashed. Fountains of lava roared hundreds of feet into the air, filling the crater with a sound unlike anything I have ever heard, a sound that belongs to the volcano alone. Pure, untamed energy. I've chased nature's greatest moments my whole life, and I have never witnessed force like that.

And then dawn came, and the volcano did something I still can't fully explain.

First light broke the horizon and caught the mist hanging over the crater, cool morning moisture mixed with volcanic steam. A rainbow appeared. Not arching over the land like every rainbow I have ever seen, but floating inside the fog itself, hovering above one of the most violent places on Earth. Delicate color suspended over fire, smoke, and rivers of lava. This is Pele's home, and in that moment I swear she was showing herself. I worked fast, balancing my exposure between the intense glow of the lava and those whisper-soft colors in the mist. Moments later the light shifted and it was gone forever. That frame became Madame Pele's Ghost Bow.

Madame Pele's Ghost Bow

But the image I had crossed an ocean for still hadn't shown itself. So I made a move, hiking to a different vantage point that put me as close to the eruption as possible.

That's when the bird appeared.

A single white tropicbird sailed out over the crater, calm and effortless, like the chaos below didn't exist. My camera and long lens were already set on the tripod. I panned over, found the bird in my frame, and started tracking, following its every move with the erupting lava behind it. This is where the real challenge begins. At that distance, against all that heat and light, keeping a small moving bird tack sharp takes total focus. I stayed with it, frame after frame. Then, for one pass, one heartbeat, it crossed directly in front of the erupting fountain. White against the inferno. Grace against fury. The exact frame that had haunted me from the start.

I pressed the shutter, and I knew. That was the moment. That was Spirit of Kīlauea.

Spirit of Kīlauea

If I had packed up one day earlier, if I had slept through one alarm, neither of these images would exist. That's the truth about this craft. The greatest images don't come from perfect planning. They come from obsession. From patience that borders on madness. From trusting that when you give nature everything you have, every once in a while she gives you back something greater than you ever imagined.

That morning on the edge of Kīlauea, she gave me two.

Sunset over the caldera, moments after episode 29 went quiet

As the sun set that evening, episode 29 went quiet. In just over 13 hours, Kīlauea had thrown fountains more than 300 feet into the air, poured out an estimated 1.8 billion gallons of lava, and resurfaced nearly 80 percent of Halemaʻumaʻu's crater floor. I stayed for one last look as the light faded, the entire caldera glowing below me like the surface of another planet. Then I started down the mountain, days of exhaustion behind me, and two once in a lifetime images in hand.

Spirit of Kīlauea and Madame Pele's Ghost Bow are both available as fine art prints in the Hawaii collection.