Pixiq

As you may know, I live in Iceland, a small volcanic island in the middle the Atlantic ocean. We're pretty far away from everyone, and our entire population amounts to that of, say, a large town in Germany. Perhaps because of the smallness of our country and how few we are, Icelanders have become quite adept at attempting to be really good at everything. (And hey, we've had at least two world's strongest men and two or three Miss Worlds in the past.) At some point we had the highest SUV/cellphone/internet activeness/various other materialistic things-per-capita ratio in the world. Living here was really great, in fact, until a few overenthusiastic venture capitalists (now regarded as Iceland's least popular individuals) got completely carried away in their "we're going to conquer the world!" shenanigans, and pretty much managed to bankrupt the entire country in late 2008. (Dragging hundreds of thousands of Dutch and British investors into the mud with us for good measure. Google Icesave if you're actually interested in details of that mess.) I suppose that can be considered quite a feat for such a small country, though not a very admirable one. Nevertheless, limping economy or not, Icelanders are for the most part very proud of being Icelandic and try their best to put Iceland on the map one way or another; otherwise we'd simply be overlooked way out here.

However, it's not often that Iceland itself makes a scene. Volcanic island or not, it's usually pretty calm here. Minor earthquakes once in a while, an occasional burp from  mostly dormant volcanos — nothing to write home about really. With no devastating natural disasters to speak of in recent history, Icelanders just aren't accustomed to viewing nature as much of a threat. So, when the now infamous Eyjafjallajökull began erupting in March of this year, everyone became really excited. No, not terrified,  excited. While most other people in the world would probably decide to keep their distance from an erupting volcano, this was not the case here. Going to check out the volcano quickly replaced going out for ice-cream or a movie as the most popular family activity in the following three weeks or so, with thousands of people making the 5-hour-hike to be able to snap a picture of themselves with a flowing red river of lava in the background. Admittedly a pretty cool thing to do, yes, but sensible? Not so much.  Amazingly, nobody came to any serious harm up on the volcano, although at one point the ground opened up in a new place just dozens of feet from where people were standing, a much-needed reminder that an erupting volcano isn't exactly an amusement park. I myself adopted a "since everyone else is doing it, I'm not interested" attitude, shaking my head at this herd-like behavior. OK, yes, I admit, if I'd had any chance of having the place to myself, I would have foolishly rushed up there, gotten as close to the lava as possible, and taken some epic self-portrait that would never be topped, ever. Obviously, this was not going to happen outside of a dream, so I did my best to convince myself I wasn't missing out on anything. But when this relatively placid flow of lava came to a halt in mid-April, I couldn't help thinking "Great. You totally missed it. Now when are you going to get another chance to photograph a live volcano, you silly girl." 

As it turned out, I didn't have to wait very long at all. A day or so later, a second and much more explosive eruption began in the same volcano. This time, the world noticed.  A steady explosion of ash, culminating in a vast cloud that could be seen stretching far out to sea on sattelite photos, ended up paralyzing air traffic and pissing off millions of travellers, many of which had probably never even heard of Iceland, or at least never given it any thought before. Looking much like an enraged monster viewed from space, this volcano clearly wasn't fooling around.

This time, people were told to stay away. Melting ice on the mountain caused sudden flooding in rivers, severely damaging the main road running along the south coast of Iceland. Farmland was devastated by falling ash. Livestock needed to be put down in some cases. I followed the news, noting the lack of crowds flocking to the area, and grew increasingly restless. On April 20th, I made up my mind to go see this myself. I set out at 3 a.m, aiming to be there by sunrise, but not expecting to get very far before being turned back. I was stunned not only to find that I had the road to myself, but also by the fact that as soon as dawn came, I could see the ash cloud long before I could see the actual mountain it was coming from. I stopped often along the way to take pictures, unsatisfied with how innocent looking the plume appeared. Like a perfectly normal cloud that had somehow gotten itself snagged on a mountain.

As I drew nearer, the plume appeared more and more sinister, and I became increasingly excited, with visions of National Geographic-worthy photos in my head.  Then I drove into the cloud.

It wasn't a gradual thing. One minute I could see the mountain very clearly, the next,  the air turned really murky and my camera started behaving strangely, with the mirror locking in every other shot and the autofocus no longer working. In no time ash began seeping into the car despite closed windows, lightly coating the dashboard and windows. I uneasily imagined the stuff sneaking just as easily into my lungs, got a few last shots, and then turned back.

The crazy curious part of me (i.e. the photographer in me) wanted to go on, but I realized I'd most likely just ruin my camera in the bargain. (Later I learned that several press photographers did indeed ruin equipment venturing much farther into the murk.)

Backtracking a bit, I took a different road and was able to drive much closer from another direction, upwind from the cloud, finally getting some decent shots of it. 

This was, to say the least, an eye-opening experience. 

Prints from this outing are available here and here